By Gabe Guo
After Super Tuesday, the field of presidential candidates significantly narrowed down. Pete Buttigieg – gone. Amy Klobuchar – gone. Mike Bloomberg – gone. Elizabeth Warren – gone.
For a little while, the only ones remaining were Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and … Tulsi Gabbard?
[Gabbard has since dropped out and endorsed Biden, as of March 19, 2020.]
A quick look at the delegate count tells us that Joe Biden leads with 1142 delegates, with Bernie Sanders slightly behind him at 824 delegates. Tulsi Gabbard, for comparison, at the time of dropping out, had a grand total of 2 delegates — both from American Samoa, the land of her ancestors. In terms of delegate count, she was behind Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar, who all ended their campaigns earlier than she.
So why was she in it for so long?
Anti-War Message
One possible explanation is that she was trying to perpetuate her anti-war message, with the belief that this message was more important than winning a primary. When asked by ABC News, she described her campaign as “an opportunity to speak to Americans every single day about the sea change we need in our foreign policy”. Gabbard’s official campaign website (tulsi2020.com) describes her as a “war veteran of two tours of duty in the Middle East and presently a major in the US Army National Guard”. With this in mind, her opposition to war makes sense, as she has literally experienced it firsthand. She further elaborates in her platform:
“Do you feel like the trillions spent on wasteful wars would be better spent at home? Would you like your government to prioritize American people’s needs? I do too. Regime change wars are wasteful and have drained our country of trillions of dollars, undermined our national security, and cost the lives of thousands of our men and women in uniform. I will bring an end to this failed foreign policy and withdraw America from ongoing conflict that achieves nothing and wastes so much.”
For those of you well-versed in literary terms, in describing the rationale for her vehement anti-war ideology, Gabbard expertly makes appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos. Or in the language of economics, Gabbard describes the explicit cost of war as the lives of thousands of American soldiers. Yet, she claims that the opportunity cost is just as great — missed opportunities to invest taxpayer dollars in American infrastructure, healthcare, education, and various other government programs for the common good.
Indeed, Medicare-for-All and affordable college are great, but if the government keeps wasting money on regime change wars, there might not be enough money to pay for it. Thus, in promoting an anti-war message, Tulsi Gabbard the Democrat is in some way advocating for a degree of fiscal conservatism: cut the guns to pay for the butter. Of course, fiscal conservatism probably isn’t the main reason for her opposition to war. But, it is undeniable that such rhetoric (“Regime change wars are wasteful and have drained our country of trillions of dollars”) is a major reason why she appeals to conservatives and libertarians, in addition to liberals.
With such an important and arguably nonpartisan message as this one, it makes sense that Tulsi Gabbard would stay in the race, even if she only had two delegates. She believed that her message was bigger than herself, the same way Sanders backers in 2016 believed that their democratic socialist movement would not die upon the nomination of Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, should Biden or Sanders win the presidency and heed Gabbard’s message, their supposedly expensive plans for healthcare and other social programs could cost just a little bit less to the taxpayer.
Diversity
Another possible explanation is that Gabbard felt the obligation, as the last woman and person of color in the race, to stay in. She said on Fox News, “But when it comes to actually making sure that – in this presidential primary – that the only woman candidate left in the race, the only woman of color, and the first female combat veteran ever to run for the presidency has a voice, the DNC and their corporate media partners say, ‘No thanks. Actually, that’s not what we want the American people to hear.’”
Let’s quickly take a flashback to the late summer, when the Democratic primary field was described as historically diverse. There were women, there were people of color, and there was even a gay candidate … Should Gabbard drop out, it will literally be a race between two old white dudes, which is not exactly representative of the Democratic electorate.
Anti-Establishment Sentiment
Tulsi Gabbard has sued Hillary Clinton for defamation, and she has sued Google for violating her First Amendment rights. We should also remember her previous quote on diversity: “ … the DNC and their corporate media partners say, ‘No thanks … ’”. She definitely has some degree of resentment against the establishment, whether that is the corporate establishment or the political establishment, which she sees as being intertwined with one another.
She then tweeted on March 6th, “@JoeBiden @BernieSanders I’m sure you would agree that our Democratic nominee should be a person who will stand up for what is right. So I ask that you have the courage to do that now in the face of the DNC’s effort to keep me from participating in the debates. #LetTulsiDebate”. Continuing the thread, she tweeted, “To keep me off the stage, the DNC again arbitrarily changed the debate qualifications. Previously they changed the qualifications in the OPPOSITE direction so Bloomberg could debate. I ask that you stand w/ me against the DNC’s transparent effort to exclude me from the debates.”
Again, this goes back to the idea of fighting for a cause bigger than herself. She believed that her exclusion from the debates did not just constitute her own exclusion. Rather, she saw this as a systematic effort by the establishment to suppress any idea which they see to be against their agenda.
YOLO
Finally, it could simply be the case that she just had nothing to lose. She had already declined to seek reelection to Congress in 2020. She had already burned a few political bridges via her repeated attacks on the establishment (remember when she roasted Kamala Harris?). And she still had $2 million cash on hand for use in her campaign, according to data provided by the FEC, although this number may have decreased since January, when it was reported (side note: she describes herself as being “very fiscally responsible with the dollars that people are contributing to our campaign”, again making a pitch to disaffected Republicans and Libertarians).
At any rate, this was her last stand, so why not go all in? You only live once, the youngsters say (or used to say, I don’t really keep up with that stuff).
Outlook
Regardless of whether or not Tulsi Gabbard was ever on a viable path to win the nomination, she definitely made a difference with her campaign. And in the very end, that’s what a campaign is supposed to do. Hate her or love her, you have to give her credit for that.
