Gov. Bill Richardson has come across a few speed bumps in recent days that are slowing attempts to gain ground in the presidential race.
The newest poll done for the Des Moines Register on the Iowa caucuses, released Sunday, has Richardson falling to 8 percent – down two points from the newspaper’s May poll and 2.3 points below the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls in Iowa. The difference of about two points is, however, well within the margin or error in all recent polls and the May Des Moines Register poll.
Though John Edwards also dropped in the newest poll, he’s still 15 points ahead of Richardson, and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both gained ground in the newest poll.
Making news of the poll worse was a Saturday report from MSNBC that the Richardson campaign’s co-chair in South Carolina was quitting and instead endorsing Joe Biden. That’s because he disagreed with Richardson’s assertion that all American soldiers can be withdrawn from Iraq in six months.
“Those of us who have had some idea about military evacuations understand that you cannot redeploy troops, or take troops out, or evacuate them within a six-month period of time,” S.C. state Rep. Fletcher Smith told MSNBC in explaining why he quit.
He added that Richardson’s plan, in his view, could do the same damage that was caused when Americans were airlifted from Saigon in 1975.
“We do not need a Vietnam-style evacuation,” he told MSNBC.
The top-tier Democratic presidential candidates all say Richardson’s withdrawal timeline is unrealistic and that promoting it is irresponsible.
Richardson is making headlines again today by being one of four Democrats to file paperwork to withdraw from the ballot in Michigan, a state that bucked the wishes of the Democratic National Committee by moving up its primary to Jan. 15, sending the primary calendar into chaos.
The moves by Michigan and other states into January make it more difficult for other candidates to catch the frontrunner, Clinton, because of the increase in resources it will take to compete in more states and states with huge media markets. Richardson obviously had to drop out of the contest in Michigan. He had no way to win it and wasn’t going to compete there anyway, and his withdrawal is an attempt to push states to follow the DNC’s wishes.
But it’s not good news for his campaign. The clock keeps ticking toward Iowa and Richardson isn’t climbing in the polls.
Gov. Bill Richardson has come across a few speed bumps in recent days that are slowing attempts to gain ground in the presidential race.