Julian Castro ended his bid for the Democratic nomination today. If Castro made any impression in this race, it was for his nastiness during some of the debates, not for any discernible support his candidacy was able to generate. The current RCP poll average has him at 1 percent, and he’s probably only registering at that level due to an outlier poll from three weeks ago that had him at 4 percent.
Castro was unable to qualify for the past two presidential debates. Moreover, there was no reason to believe that participating in those debates would have helped his candidacy appreciably. His earlier debate appearances didn’t do much for him.
Castro may be hoping for the vice presidential nomination. That honor seems like a longshot given the weakness of his presidential bid. You never know, however. Democrats may have cause for concern about how their nominee will perform among Latino voters. It’s possible that this concern will prompt the nominee to select Castro as his or her running mate.
However, if Joe Biden is the nominee, I think he’s more likely to forgive Kamala Harris’s attack on his anti-busing position than Castro’s thinly veiled attack on his age. For one thing, Harris pulled off her attack with aplomb, while Castro just looked nasty. For another, Harris, as weak as her candidacy was by the end, made a considerably stronger run than Castro did.
Finally, Biden’s age and memory will be issues in the general election, if the former VP is the nominee. Thus, Castro’s attack would make his inclusion on the ticket a source of embarrassment for Biden.
Allahpundit reminds us that after Kamala Harris dropped out, Castro accused the media of having applied a “grossly unfair” double standard in its coverage of her. Allahpundit characterizes this as “a thinly veiled racial pander aimed at picking up [Harris’s] disgruntled voters.” We’ll see whether Castro serves up similar whining about the demise of his candidacy, now that he’s no longer positioned to pick up anyone’s disgruntled voters.
Castro’s complaint about the coverage of Harris was as follows:
In the last few days, to see articles out of Politico, the New York Times, Washington Post that have basically trashed her campaign, and focused on just one small part of it, and I think held her to a different standard, a double standard, has been grossly unfair and unfortunate.
Unfortunately for Castro, those three outlets — Politico, the Times, and the Post — haven’t focused even on a small part of his campaign. They have ignored him for months, not because of his ethnicity, but because of his failure to register in the polls.
Castro was the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama. As such, it was Castro who pushed the Affirmative Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) agenda, including radical regulations. Involving, as it does, moving people to and from neighborhoods, and even cities and towns, based on their race, AFFH marries authoritarianism with identity politics in a particularly evil way.
Castro’s other claim to fame was his insistence that illegal border crossings be decriminalized. It thus gives me pleasure to see him drop out of the race only one month before the Iowa caucuses.
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