Steve Bullock ends his presidential bid

On Mon­day, Montana’s Gov­er­nor Steve Bul­lock announced to CNN that he would be aban­don­ing his bid for the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nomination.

Point­ing to the still-enor­­mous field of Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­tenders, Bul­lock said: “While there were many obsta­cles we could not have antic­i­pat­ed when enter­ing this race, it has become clear that in this moment, I won’t be able to break through to the top tier of this still-crowd­ed field of candidates.”

Gov­er­nor Bul­lock is the lat­est exam­ple of the weird dynam­ic with­in the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry cycle, one in which polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence and exec­u­tive skill seem to mat­ter very lit­tle. Of the top ten polling can­di­dates, two (Andrew Yang and Tom Stey­er) have nev­er held elect­ed office, one (Pete Buttigieg) is a mil­len­ni­al with only may­oral expe­ri­ence, and one (Michael Bloomberg) has won elec­tions as a Repub­li­can and Inde­pen­dent, but nev­er as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic contender.

Mean­while, mul­ti-term gov­er­nors with sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal and leg­isla­tive achieve­ments under their belts – Colorado’s John Hick­en­loop­er, Washington’s Jay Inslee, and now Steve Bul­lock – have fall­en by the wayside.

Bullock’s can­di­da­cy nev­er real­ly made it off the ground; his polling scraped along at around 1%, he strug­gled to raise funds and he only man­aged to get on stage in the July debate before being left behind by ris­ing entry requirements.

His num­bers prob­a­bly weren’t helped by the fact that he was swept up in a slugfest between pro­gres­sives and neolib­er­al can­di­dates in his only debate performance.

Bullock’s debate per­for­mance was par­tic­u­lar­ly embar­rass­ing for him, as his defin­ing moment con­sist­ed of start­ing an unpro­voked fight with Eliz­a­beth War­ren over nuclear weapons, of all things. Vot­ers came away from that debate with the uneasy real­iza­tion that a Pres­i­dent Bul­lock would seem­ing­ly have no qualms about autho­riz­ing sur­prise nuclear strikes, like some deranged com­ic book villain.

The real dam­age the debate did to Bullock’s can­di­da­cy was that it gave across the impres­sion that he was mere­ly part of a bloc of neolib­er­al candidates.

But Bullock’s can­di­da­cy didn’t fit neat­ly into a pro­gres­sives vs. neolib­er­al frame­work. Despite his views on Medicare For All and nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion, the Mon­tana Gov­er­nor has a strong pro­gres­sive streak.

He described him­self as a “pro-choice, pro-union Demo­c­rat,” and railed against the insid­i­ous role of big mon­ey in pol­i­tics. How­ev­er, the unusu­al dynam­ics of this con­test didn’t allow him to make this case to the vot­ers effectively.

Anoth­er key sell­ing point that Bul­lock was unable to cap­i­tal­ize upon was his posi­tion as the only Demo­c­rat to win statewide elec­tion in a red state in 2016.

Bul­lock was able to com­fort­ably win reelec­tion despite the fact that Mon­tana swung for Trump by over twen­ty points! This abil­i­ty to appeal to con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ers should have been com­pelling to Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, but was large­ly drowned out in the cru­cial ear­ly stages by the sea of con­tenders (now that the field has thinned some­what, Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar is mak­ing a sim­i­lar pitch more effectively).

Bullock’s polit­i­cal path is now unclear.

Hav­ing aban­doned his White House cam­paign, he will also have to aban­don the governor’s res­i­dence in Hele­na after 2020; Mon­tana has guber­na­to­r­i­al term-lim­its. Bul­lock has also unequiv­o­cal­ly ruled out run­ning for the U.S. Sen­ate – despite the fact that incum­bent Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Steve Daines’ seat is up in 2020.

How­ev­er, a Sen­ate run for Bul­lock is still a pos­si­bil­i­ty. After dis­miss­ing a Sen­ate run while he was still a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, Colorado’s John Hick­en­loop­er was con­vinced to mount a Sen­ate cam­paign against Cory Gard­ner. Bul­lock could still be lob­bied by forces with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty into chal­leng­ing Daines.