On Monday, former Gov. Abercrombie (D) of Hawaii called on current democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard to resign from Congress. Rep. Gabbard has already stated that she will not seek reelection in 2020. So what prompted this call for Rep. Gabbard to resign with only 10 months left in office?
A former Democratic governor of Hawaii on Monday called on presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard to immediately resign from her seat in Congress so the state can hold a special election to replace her.
Neil Abercrombie, who led the state from 2010 to 2014, personally phoned Gabbard, who isn’t seeking reelection, before he went public with his call for her resignation at a news conference in Hawaii. His biggest complaint is that as she runs for president, she’s been largely absent from Congress.
Rep. Gabbard hasn’t just been “largely absent” from Congress — she's barely been doing her job:
But missing votes alone wouldn’t be enough for such an unprecedented call, especially against a representative who is running for president.
Well, I’m sure Rep. Gabbard’s cowardly vote of ‘present’ on a layup impeachment call a few days prior didn’t help.
Such moral cowardice earned her a level of mocking that even rose to the popular culture radar of Saturday Night Live. But many the progressive community were not surprised, despite Rep. Gabbard earning support and praise from many prominent figures in the Democratic Party:
Why the lack of surprise by CAP President Neera Tanden? Rep. Gabbard has earned the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders campaign co-chair:
Rep. Gabbard is also still not just a member but a Fellow of the Sanders Institute.
Surely, being endorsed by Nina Turner, and having a rather exclusive position in the Sanders Institute is indicative of progressive bonafides?
Unfortunately, despite running in our Democratic Presidential Primary, Rep. Gabbard is no progressive. Rep. Gabbard is the representative of HI-02, which has a PVI of Strongly Democratic. However, she has a dismal voting record, earning her one of the least progressive scores. She also has the distinction of being the only candidate in the democratic presidential primary endorsed by former GOP State Senator and klansman David Duke.
Rep. Gabbard has remained in race when far more qualified and competent candidates, like Sen. Kamala Harris, have already had to drop out. All the while receiving endorsements from sources one wouldn’t necessarily associate with each other. 538 sheds some light on her source of support. For starters, her base is...
...overwhelmingly male —according to The Economist’s polling with YouGov, her support among men is in the mid-single digits, while her support among women is practically nonexistent.
And unsurprisingly...
Gabbard’s supporters are also likely to fall outside of traditional Democratic circles. Her supporters, for instance, are more likely to have backed President Trump in 2016
The circuitous assessment of 538 is what Jonathan Chait succinctly defines as the “anti-anti-Trump left”. It’s why Rep. Gabbard can be endorsed by both the co-chair of the Sanders campaign and grand wizard David Duke.
...what brought them to this strange place is their hatred for the center-left, which blots out any sense of proportion of the danger Trump poses...While incomprehensible to liberals, centrists, and even many leftists ... anti-anti-Trumpism has a coherent logic. It takes as its starting point a familiar critique that Trump won because liberalism failed. Trump, while bad, is merely a meta-phenomenon of the larger failure of the Democratic Party and the political and economic Establishment. And so, to the extent that investigating Trump’s scandalous behavior allows Democrats to discredit Trump without undergoing revolutionary internal changes, it is counterproductive.
To keep things in perspective...
...Gabbard doesn’t have a ton of supporters: She’s averaging 1 to 2 percent in national surveys and 2 to 4 percent in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
However, Chait warns what her persistence means:
Left-wing anti-anti-Trumpism played an important role in the bizarre 2016 outcome...
But Gabbard’s emergence is another indication that the disaffection that drove these events has not disappeared. Anti-anti-Trumpism has maintained a small but durable intellectual infrastructure.
Trump, of course, won* due to racism, voter suppression, the inefficient distribution of democratic votes, the repeal of the Voting Rights Act, the FBI and James Comey, and Russia. It had nothing to do with the Democratic Party, as evidenced by the strong correlation between racial resentment and Trump support, the negative correlation between income and Trump support, the positive correlation between opinions of the economy and support for Hillary Clinton, and even the behavior of our misogynistic media.
The unscientific, and even pseudo-religious belief that Trump is punishment for the sins of the Democratic Party is a distraction from voter suppression, media attitudes, and the need to repass the VRA, and has no place in the Democratic Party. Gov. Abercrombie is right to call for Rep. Gabbard to resign.