Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney is calling it quits. If I’m being honest, I don’t know who the hell that is. I would also like to add that I live in Maryland and cover politics and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of John Delaney, a Democrat, who was running for president (who knew?). And now he no longer is running, or as Beyoncé’s husband put it, “Grand opening, grand closing.”
Managing Editor Genetta Adams: Umm, Steve, The Root’s Terrell Starr spoke with Delaney, who actually had some interesting views.
Me: Oh, I thought that guy was a police chief.
If John Delaney were carrying a sign that said “I’m John Delaney,” I still couldn’t pick him out in a room full of black men, but it turns out that Delaney is ending his bid for the White House. “I’m announcing this morning that I’m withdrawing from the 2020 race,” Delaney said on CNN’s New Day, the Hill reports.
“I’ve campaigned harder than anyone in Iowa through all 99 counties. I’ve done hundreds of events across this great state, but it’s clear to me on Monday, on caucus night, I will not have sufficient support to get to the 15 percent viability threshold,” he continued.
I know what you are thinking: Who the fuck is John Delaney?! Well, I guess he was a moderate because he claims that his supporters were enough to take votes away from other moderates in the race.
“I just don’t want to do that, because I think we need a candidate that’s running in the center,” he said.
Delaney, who, chances are, you’ve never heard of before this article, didn’t say who he’d be endorsing, but added that “a number of candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) fit his criteria for a moderate candidate who could unite the country,” the Hill reports.
“It’s clear to me that to have the best chance of beating Donald Trump, which is the most important thing for our party at this moment in time, and to actually be able to govern...we need someone with that type of orientation,” he said.
“I think we’ve clearly shaped the debate in a very positive way,” he said.
Delaney, who apparently was running for president, said that he’d support whoever won the nomination, including Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.), who he threw a heaping helping of shade, claiming that Sanders’ “progressive platform did not show ‘responsible leadership.”
“People like Bernie Sanders who are running on throwing the whole U.S. economy out the window and starting from scratch, he’s running on taking private health insurance away from 180 million Americans, I just think that makes our job so much harder, in terms of beating Donald Trump,” he said, the Hill reports.
A Morning Consult poll, viewed by the Hill showed that I wasn’t the only one that had trouble picking out Delaney at a Johnson family cookout as he was polling at 1 percent.