Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
Someone finally jumped out of the clown car.
Exactly three months after announcing his presidential bid, Representative Eric Swalwell of California became the first serious Democratic primary candidate to end his campaign.
“The polling wasn’t moving after the debate,” Mr. Swalwell told reporters this afternoon. “We didn’t want to just screw around here. We wanted to grow with the threshold, and if we didn’t, we wanted to get out.”
Democrats had fretted over the possibility of a drawn-out primary battle, but strategists, politicians and officials are growing more confident that the field will narrow soon after the Iowa caucuses in early February.
As some candidates may be starting to realize, time spent lingering at the bottom of the presidential polls could come at a cost back home.
That’s part of what happened to Mr. Swalwell. Despite his best efforts — a gun control platform, videos of changing diapers, aggressively going after former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the debate — Mr. Swalwell struggled to gain traction in the race. Meanwhile, back in California, a young Afghan-American city counselor who has been compared to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York announced her bid for his House seat.
“I didn’t take anything for granted,” Mr. Swalwell said today, noting that he planned to go directly from his announcement to an immigration event in his district. “I hope the district sees that these issues that I was running on nationally are the district’s issues.”
Mr. Swalwell’s exit may be a harbinger for other ambitious politicians failing to make a dent in the 2020 race.
Aides to former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado recommended he drop out of the primary and challenge Senator Cory Gardner, considered to be one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans.
In Iowa yesterday, Mr. Hickenlooper, whose campaign recently lost some of its top staffers, acknowledged that running for president involves “a bunch of skills that don’t come naturally to me,” but vowed to stay in the race. He has until mid-March to enter the Senate race.
Some Democrats have also urged Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana to run for Senate, hoping the popular governor could win an unlikely Democratic seat in a red state. He would also have until spring to make that decision.
But in Texas, the filing deadline to challenge Senator John Cornyn, another potentially vulnerable Republican incumbent, is Dec. 9 — nearly two months before any primary votes are cast. And although Democrats have already recruited M.J. Hegar, a veteran who won attention for her 2018 congressional campaign, both Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro are better known in the state, and both have been pushed to run for the seat.
The remaining members of Congress in the 2020 race hail from states that have laws allowing them to pursue two offices at once. (New Jersey recently passed legislation permitting it, a bill know as “Cory’s Law.”) But just because some candidates can run for both offices doesn’t mean they should.
In Hawaii, State Senator Kai Kahele is seeking Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s seat, telling Vice News that she has a “tiger on her tail, and she’s going to be in trouble.” In Massachusetts, a second woman announced on Monday that she’d be making a primary run for Representative Seth Moulton’s seat. At least five other Democrats have left the door open to jumping into the race.
But don’t get too excited about the field shrinking quite yet. As Mr. Swalwell leaves, the California billionaire Tom Steyer plans to enter the race.
“I wish him well,” Mr. Swalwell said quickly, before dashing off to afternoon events in his district.
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Cory Booker’s history of ‘showing up’
Last week, after Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey traveled to the southwestern border to escort asylum seekers into the United States, our colleague Nick Corasaniti looked into the senator’s history of getting personally involved. He sent us this:
For almost two decades, Cory Booker has cultivated an aura of ubiquity for his political brand.
And not just on Twitter.
Since his election to the City Council of Newark in 1998, Mr. Booker has capitalized on a unique brand of physical advocacy: inserting himself directly, and publicly, into the issues he’s fighting for, effecting change and drawing attention.
“Publicity stunts? You’re darn right,” Mr. Booker told The Associated Press in 2000. “You’ve got to attract attention to a problem sometimes to get something done about it.”
As he went to the border last week to accompany five refugees seeking asylum, I took a look at Mr. Booker’s habit of “showing up.”
Here are a few scraps from that playbook:
1999: Mr. Booker pitched a tent outside a notorious housing complex in Newark, sleeping there (and fasting) for 10 days to draw attention to brazen drug dealing and decrepit conditions. With growing local media attention, Mayor Sharpe James eventually installed 24-hour security detail and a new fence.
2000: Mr. Booker rented a Holiday Rambler R.V. for the summer, parking it on the city’s most dangerous corners and holding public events like job fairs. The drug dealers mingling with street crowds quickly thinned out, and “60 Minutes,” CNN and other national news outlets dropped in.
2010: In separate snowstorms, Mr. Booker delivered diapers and helped shovel out snowbound residents in response to messages sent on Twitter, showcasing social media changing government. Some critics felt it masked management shortcomings.
2018: During the confirmation hearing for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, Mr. Booker released documents he claimed were confidential (some of which were actually declassified). Though it brought added attention to the hearing, Mr. Booker also called it a “Spartacus” moment, earning himself hefty derision.
Read Nick’s full article: Cory Booker’s Brand of Advocacy: Show Up. Cameras Often Follow.
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What to read tonight
• Jeffrey E. Epstein, the billionaire charged with sex trafficking involving underage girls, has connections to Bill Clinton and Donald J. Trump. Here’s a look at how the White House is caught up in the scandal.
• President James Monroe enslaved hundreds of people. For generations, a small African-American community has existed less than 10 miles from his former plantation. But only recently has the full extent of their relationship been revealed.