2020 Democratic Race Registers Its First Casualty

(Photo of Richard Ojeda is from the West Virginia Press Association.)

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is expected to be crowded, and indeed, a couple of days ago there were already nine people who had declared their candidacy. But one of the nine has already dropped out of the race -- even though we are still about a year away from the first caucuses and primaries.

West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (pictured) announced that he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination last November. And just about 11 days ago, he resided his senate seat to put all of his efforts into his presidential campaign.

That didn't last long though. Ojeda ran into a wall of reality, and last Friday he dropped out of the race. In a 90 second video, he said:

“When I was a kid in grade school, my teachers always said that anyone could grow up and become president. Unfortunately, what I’m starting to realize is that unless you have wealth, influence and power, it’s not gonna happen.”

He went on to say he couldn't ask people to continue donating "to a campaign that's probably not going to get off the ground".

Of course, he's right. You either have to be rich or well known enough to attract big money to run a presidential campaign -- and he had neither.

His dropping of his campaign was not covered by the mainstream media, which just further proves his point. I doubt that most Democrats will know that he's dropped out of the race, because most of them didn't know he was in the race (or even who he was).