Lincoln Chafee Just Dropped Out of the Presidential Race

Lin­coln Chafee on Fri­day be­came the second can­did­ate of the week to drop out of the Demo­crat­ic field for 2016, leav­ing just three main con­tenders for the Demo­crat­ic primary race.

Just two days after Jim Webb left the pack—with an in­de­pend­ent run still pos­sible—Chafee an­nounced his full with­draw­al from the race at the DNC Wo­men’s Lead­er­ship For­um Fri­day morn­ing.

“As you may know I have been cam­paign­ing on a plat­form of Prosper­ity Through Peace,” Chafee said. “But after much thought I have de­cided to end my cam­paign for the pres­id­ent today.”

Chafee nev­er made a big mark on the Demo­crat­ic field des­pite his long re­sume. He served as a may­or, a sen­at­or, and the gov­ernor of Rhode Is­land. He began his polit­ic­al ca­reer as a Re­pub­lic­an, be­came an in­de­pend­ent in 2007, and then joined the Demo­crat­ic party in 2013. As he said at the Demo­crat­ic primary de­bate: “The party left me. …. There was no room for a lib­er­al mod­er­ate Re­pub­lic­an in that party.”

Chafee based much of his cam­paign on cri­ti­ciz­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton’s Sen­ate vote in 2002 to au­thor­ize the war in Ir­aq, and was known more for his sunny dis­pos­i­tion—and his unique polit­ic­al po­s­i­tion of chan­ging the United State to the met­ric sys­tem—than his lead­er­ship prowess.

Chafee ad­dressed his war-averse plat­form in his speech, be­gin­ning with a ref­er­ence to an an­cient Greek play, Lys­istrata, in which a group of wo­men with­held their “fa­vors” from their “war-mon­ger­ing” hus­bands un­til peace could be re­stored.

“And it worked!” Chafee said.

He cri­ti­cized the Re­pub­lic­an field for what he per­ceives as their dis­in­terest in “un­der­stand­ing” North Africa and the Middle East.

“In­stead they prefer to es­pouse bel­li­cos­ity, more saber-rat­tling and more blind macho pos­tur­ing,” Chafee said. “When I hear all their tough talk I have déjà vu about the ‘evil’ Viet Cong. We should be dif­fer­ent. Demo­crats should in­sist on learn­ing from the les­sons of Vi­et­nam.”

He ad­voc­ated for a more gentle United States.

“Do we want to be re­membered as a bomber of wed­dings and hos­pit­als?” Chafee said. “Or do we want to be re­membered as peace­makers, as pi­on­eers of a more har­mo­ni­ous world?”

Not every­one was so thrilled by his point of view. Chafee struggled to fun­draise since his pres­id­en­tial an­nounce­ment in June. Only 10 people con­trib­uted enough money to Chafee’s cam­paign to mer­it an item­ized list­ing in his third-quarter Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion re­port. Between those 10, some unitem­ized donors, and a $4,100 con­tri­bu­tion Chafee made to his cam­paign, he took in just $15,000, an amount NPR called “down­right em­bar­rass­ing” for a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate.

Chafee began his re­marks pledging “all my en­ergy” to the Demo­crat­ic party in 2016, sug­gest­ing that he’d com­pletely closed the door on mak­ing an in­de­pend­ent run, un­like Webb. DNC Chair Debbie Wasser­man Schultz, who took the stage after Chafee’s an­nounce­ment, was grate­ful for his guar­an­tee, call­ing him a “class act” and thank­ing him for his “re­mark­able pub­lic ser­vice.”