Former Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb is officially out of the Democratic Party presidential race, still leaving open the possibility that he would make what would be a difficult run for president as an independent candidate.
“I fully accept that my views on many issues are not compatible with the power structure and base of the Democratic Party,” Webb said in a Tuesday afternoon press conference at the National Press Club. “For this reason I am withdrawing from any consideration of being the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency.”
Webb wasn’t able to catch fire in his campaign for the Democratic nomination, never getting above the 1 and 2 percent mark in national polls. He also had raised less than $700,000 for his campaign, a small fraction of what the top contenders on both sides of the aisle have been able to generate to fund their efforts.
How he would be able to fund an independent campaign that would need to build individual organizations in all 50 states just to get on the ballot is another question for another day.
Webb, for now, seems to think that there would be more support for him as an independent than there could have been in the Democratic Party fold.
“Poll after poll shows that a strong plurality of Americans is neither Republican nor Democrat. Overwhelmingly they’re independents,” Webb said today. “Our political candidates are being pulled to the extremes. They are increasingly out of step with the people they are supposed to serve.”
– Story by Chris Graham
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