Reports are emerging that former Virginia Democrat Senator Jim Webb, who briefly ran for this year’s Democrat presidential nomination, might announce an independent bid this afternoon.
Webb launched a campaign for the Democrat nomination last July and ran in the mold of John F. Kennedy with positions on national defense and many domestic policies that were far more centrist than the far left-positions taken by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. However, despite campaigning nationwide and participating in two nationally televised debates, Webb gained little support in a Democrat Party that has moved far to his left.
Webb was Secretary of the Navy under iconic conservative president Ronald Reagan, but he later defeated incumbent conservative Virginia Republican senator George Allen on a centrist platform in the vein of traditional Virginia Democrats. He served one term in the Senate, assembling a voting record that was often more liberal than his rhetoric, notably casting the deciding vote to pass Obamacare through the Senate. He declined to run for reelection, stating his frustration with the hyperpartisan environment and his inability to get much done.
When he dropped out of the race for the Democrat presidential nomination last October, he expressed his disdain for the current state of his party, as quoted in The Politico:
“I fully accept that my views on many issues are not compatible with the power structure and the nominating base of the Democratic Party,” Webb told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. The current Democratic hierarchy, he said, “is not comfortable with many of the policies laid forth, and frankly I am not that comfortable with many of theirs.”
On whether he would continue to call himself a Democrat, Webb responded, “We’ll think about that.”
“The Democratic Party is heavily invested in interest-group politics,” he said, and that could exclude groups it means to include, responding to a question about his reluctance to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement and to call on the removal of the Confederate flag from federal grounds.
And as further quoted in The Hill:
Webb also said he felt like an anachronism in an increasingly progressive party, arguing Democrats had moved away from “millions of dedicated, hard-working Americans.”
Asked at his concession speech whether he was still a Democratic, Webb said, “We will think about that.”
“Some people say I am a Republican who became a Democrat, but that I often sound like a Republican in a room full of Democrats or a Democrat in a room full of Republicans,” he added. “Actually, I take that as a compliment.”
By launching an independent bid for the presidency, Webb would be free to run on the centrist policies that he has long advocated but was stifled from advancing as a Democrat senator. Both of the remaining candidates in the Democrat race, career criminal Hillary Clinton and career Marxist Bernie Sanders, are both very controversial and could lose significant support from within the party’s base. The same is true of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has generated significant opposition within his party with his xenophobic policy positions and bigoted rhetoric. Webb believes these deeply flawed major party candidates create a unique opportunity for an independent to win election:
Webb hinted at an independent run when he dropped out of the primary, saying he could see himself beating Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in a three-way race.
“If we ran an independent race that worked and got traction, I honestly could see us beating both of them,” he said at the time.
Is today the day we’ll begin to find out if he’s right?
UPDATE: Webb announced this afternoon that he is not going to make an independent bid for the presidency because he could not raise enough funds to be viable. He described both parties as being “in crisis.”
