Washington Governor Jay Inslee ends his candidacy for President of the United States

Jay Inslee has pulled the plug on his pres­i­den­tial campaign.

In an appear­ance on MSNBC’s The Rachel Mad­dow Show, Wash­ing­ton State’s chief exec­u­tive announced that he has decid­ed to with­draw from the 2020 field, hav­ing con­clud­ed that his can­di­da­cy was not gain­ing traction.

BREAKING: Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee tells Rachel #Mad­dow that he is exit­ing the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry race. pic.twitter.com/u8ZVlTjytM

— Mad­dow Blog (@MaddowBlog) August 22, 2019

Inslee recent­ly met the donor thresh­old for the third Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debates in Hous­ton, but he has­n’t been polling well enough to meet the pub­lic opin­ion thresh­old. Hav­ing con­clud­ed there was no way to be includ­ed in next mon­th’s debates, Inslee has decid­ed to leave the race.

“I want to share a tough deci­sion with you,” Inslee said in an email to his list.

“I know you agree that our mis­sion to defeat cli­mate change must con­tin­ue to be cen­tral to our nation­al dis­cus­sion — and must be the top pri­or­i­ty for our next pres­i­dent. But I’ve con­clud­ed that my role in that effort will not be as a can­di­date to be the next pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.”

(Empha­sis is the campaign’s.)

“On Mon­day, our cam­paign hit one of two crit­i­cal DNC thresh­olds to qual­i­fy for the next debate — 130,000 grass­roots donors. Reach­ing that chal­leng­ing mile­stone proves the strong sup­port that defeat­ing cli­mate [dam­age] has amongst the grass­roots of our par­ty. How­ev­er, at the same time we reached this thresh­old, it became clear that we would not meet the DNC’s polling thresh­old, thus we would not have been invit­ed to the fall debates.”

“As a result, I don’t believe we can com­pete for the atten­tion and expo­sure need­ed to have a rea­son­able shot at the nomination.”

“Tru­di and I love you,” Inslee added in closing.

Now the ques­tion is: Will Inslee seek a third term as Gov­er­nor of the State of Wash­ing­ton? We won’t have to wait very long to find out.

“I will have state­ments tomor­row about my inten­tions,” Inslee told Mad­dow in MSNBC’s New York stu­dios, refus­ing to say any­thing more about his plans.

“I need to go back to the State of Wash­ing­ton,” he empha­sized, when Mad­dow pressed him for an answer on whether he would run for governor.

He isn’t endors­ing a rival can­di­date at this time, he said.

Sev­er­al of Inslee’s rivals praised his candidacy.

“Thank you Jay Inslee for fight­ing every day to make sure that cli­mate change remains a pri­ma­ry focus of this elec­tion. Cli­mate change is real and it’s a cri­sis —and I will keep fight­ing along­side you to take bold action before it is too late,” tweet­ed Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Mass­a­chu­setts, a lead­ing con­tender.

“Few lead­ers have done more to shine a light on the cli­mate cri­sis than Jay Inslee,” tweet­ed Sen­a­tor Kamala Har­ris of Cal­i­for­nia. “His voice will be missed in this pri­ma­ry but I know he will con­tin­ue this fight.”

MORE FROM NPI’S RUAIRI VAUGHAN: Gov­er­nor Inslee’s cam­paign was laser-focused on the issue of cli­mate dam­age, cor­rect­ly argu­ing that main­tain­ing a hab­it­able earth has a tie-in with every oth­er impor­tant issue.

Inslee had a detailed, ten-year plan to tack­le the cli­mate cri­sis, with bold mea­sures includ­ing a tran­si­tion to 100% clean ener­gy, a $9 tril­lion invest­ment plan, a new approach to for­eign pol­i­cy, and cut­ting the flow of fos­sil fuels.

Dur­ing the debates Inslee didn’t get a whole lot of speak­ing time. He played sec­ond fid­dle to bet­ter known can­di­dates who the mod­er­a­tors urged to take each oth­er on, like Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris. But when the dis­cus­sion turned to what to do about the cli­mate cri­sis, he owned the issue. In the July debates he stood out by call­ing out the for­mer Vice President’s mid­dle-of-the-road envi­ron­men­tal plan for its lack of ambi­tion, say­ing “the time is up. Our house is on fire!”

Even when oth­er can­di­dates tried to tout their own envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, they felt the need to also praise Inslee’s com­pre­hen­sive policies.

Inslee’s with­draw­al will dis­ap­point envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions; he con­sis­tent­ly topped Greenpeace’s 2020 cli­mate rank­ing, and gained the love of the youth-led Sun­rise Move­ment by bat­tling with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee (DNC) over the mer­its of a cli­mate change-focused debate. The Movement’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, Varshi­ni Prakash, tweet­ed on Wednes­day, “We’ll miss you in this race @JayInslee.”

Inslee’s with­draw­al from the race sparked a show­er of praise from all the oth­er major can­di­dates, who all not­ed his campaign’s impact on the nation­al dis­course. For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden tweet­ed that “the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton are for­tu­nate to have a Gov­er­nor who fights to make their lives bet­ter now and to pro­tect our plan­et in the future.”