Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has surpassed a milestone that his presidential campaign has been aiming at and emphasizing for weeks: He said he’s received contributions from more than 130,000 different donors.
“This is an enormous win for climate activists and for the grassroots movement to defeat climate change,” Inslee said in prepared statements. “Together we have put the climate crisis front and center in the 2020 race.”
But they haven’t put Inslee front and center in the 2020 race.
His climate-focused campaign has had an impact on the overcrowded Democratic presidential race, but it hasn’t been able to boost Inslee’s standing in the contest. He remains near the very bottom of Democratic primary polls, he won’t appear in a CNN climate town hall that his cajoling helped spur, and he’s almost certain to be left out of the next Democratic debate.
The 130,000 donors may be a win for the campaign, but it’s looking like a hollow victory.
The number, after all, is an arbitrary figure chosen by the Democratic National Committee to determine who of the nearly two-dozen Democratic presidential candidates will qualify for the third debate in September. But Inslee is falling far short in the DNC’s other determining threshold: polling. To qualify for the next debate, candidates need to garner at least 2 percent in four separate polls, by Aug. 28.
Inslee hasn’t cracked 2 percent in a single qualifying poll. The most recent national poll gave him zero percent support. He’s no longer even listed among the top-20 Democratic candidates in polling averages.
Inslee’s unceasing calls for a climate debate haven’t persuaded the DNC to stage one, but they’ve led both MSNBC and CNN to announce “climate town halls” with presidential candidates.
But while he’s released the race’s most detailed and ambitious plans to combat climate change, and become a near daily fixture on cable news, Inslee won’t be invited to participate in CNN’s Climate Crisis Town Hall. CNN, which has invited nine candidates, is using the same polling threshold for its Sept. 4 event as the DNC is using for its debate, the week after.
