On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee released a new ad promoting its “Democratic Unity Fund” that featured 10 presidential candidates all reciting the same message, but strangely enough, one candidate who has taken on her party by criticizing party darlings Hillary Clinton and Sen. Kamala Harris as well as refusing to vote for impeaching President Trump was not included.
That’s correct; as Joseph Wulfsohn noted for Fox News, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) was unceremoniously dumped from the list. Lest there be protests that Gabbard’s poll numbers have been low, let it be noted that one of the candidates reciting the pledge was former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, whose latest numbers in a Fox News poll languished at 0%.
The candidates include former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-VT), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, (D-MA), former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, (D-MN)., tech businessman Andrew Yang, Sen. Cory Booker, (D-NJ) billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer, and Patrick.
All of them stated, “I’m running to be your nominee, but no matter who ends up on that stage as our nominee in the convention, we need the whole Democratic Party to unite if we want to take back the White House and win seats all across the country and deliver a presidency consistent with our Democratic values. Unity is what this moment in history demands of us right now because the stakes have never been higher. As Democrats, we know there is so much more that unites us than divides us. And next year, we have the opportunity to make sure that our shared values are represented.”
Clinton had claimed Gabbard was being groomed by the Russians as a third-party candidate, telling The Daily Beast. “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Gabbard fired back on Twitter, writing, “Great! Thank you @Hillary Clinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.”
Harris was on the receiving end of withering questions from Gabbard in a July presidential debate which resulted in Harris’ poll numbers plunging and never recovering. Gabbard fired at Harris:
I want to bring the conversation back to the broken criminal justice system that is disproportionately negatively impacting black and brown people all across this country today. Now Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California.
Gabbard’s exclusion did not go unnoticed on social media:
So Deval Patrick gets included by @TulsiGabbard does not? https://t.co/1iCAHCFmvf
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) December 23, 2019
Democrats come together in “Unity” to exclude Tulsi: https://t.co/2mU21C3xxZ
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 23, 2019
Strange, a certain woman of color is missing from this video https://t.co/WakJQ2pWUN
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) December 23, 2019