Several top-tier Democratic presidential candidates have dropped out of the 2020 presidential race in the past 24 hours — with just one day to go before Super Tuesday.
In doing so, they have disenfranchised thousands of their own voters, many of whom have voted early or by mail — thanks to liberal voting rules that Democrats prefer over traditional same-day, in-person voting.
Ironically, they have denied their own supporters a meaningful 2020 vote.
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg withdrew on Sunday evening, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) dropped out on Monday afternoon — one day after Black Lives Matter activists shut down a rally in her home state of Minnesota.
Klobuchar planned to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden, but that is little consolation to the tens of thousands of Minnesotans who have already voted, many for her, and cannot have those votes back.
Over two-thirds of Californians vote by mail, and while neither Buttigieg nor Klobuchar are polling well in the state, they represent thousands of mail-in ballots that are already on their way.
It is possible that many of those Democratic Party voters would have wanted to take sides in the emerging fight between Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Or perhaps many would have given their votes to the newcomer, billionaire Mike Bloomberg.
It is too late now.
The candidates’ poor timing exacerbates other problems the Democratic presidential primary had already been experiencing with new innovations like ranked-choice voting, which meant to ensure that everyone’s vote counted, but in practice turned the Iowa and Nevada caucuses into logistical nightmares.
Republicans, who prefer old-fashioned, same-day, in-person, winner-take-all voting, can point to the mess as a strong argument in their favor.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.