Amash and out

He’s….not running:

Representative Justin Amash of Michigan announced on Saturday that he would not pursue the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president, bringing an end to his extended flirtation with a third-party candidacy that could have introduced a new element of uncertainty into the race between President Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Amash, a former Republican who left the party last year after clashing with Mr. Trump and later voted to impeach him, explained on Twitter that he believed there were probably insurmountable hurdles to running a successful candidacy this year from outside the two major political parties.

Among those challenges, he said, is the difficulty of campaigning and qualifying for the ballot in all 50 states during a pandemic that has brought much of the country’s public life to a halt. He added that it would be difficult to raise money in the middle of a severe economic downturn.

One cannot know for sure how this would have played out, but I still think the basic assumption that anything that potentially divides what has always been a pretty robust anti-Trump majority has more downside than upside is sound. I still doubt that any material number of potentially gettable voters will vote for whatever grifting ratfucker the Greens barf up this year, so a Libertarian with potential access to a real media platform is most likely to split the anti-Trump vote. It seems like this now won’t happen, which is probably a good thing.