Seth Moulton: Way Below Zero-- Nationally, In Iowa And In New Hampshire

Seth Moulton represents Massachusetts' comfortably blue 6th district in the northeast corner of the state. Even as weak a candidate as Hillary was able to beat Trump there 56.1% to 38.2%. The district starts in the suburbs north of Boston-- Saugus and Lynn-- goes as far west as Billerica and Tewksbury and north through Salem, Ipswich and Newbury to the border with New Hampshire. The last time the GOP seriously contested the seat was when Moulten-- an independent who switched to the Democratic Party to run-- knocked off long time incumbent John Tierney in 2014. The GOP ran Richard Tisei, a gay Republican, and tossed half a million dollars into the race. Tisei raised $2,014,234, far more than previous of subsequent Republicans running in the district. Moulton beat him 149,638 (53.6%) to 111,989 (40.2%). The GOP didn't have a candidate in 2016 and there was just a vanity candidate, Joseph Schneider, last year, who Moulton beat 65.2% to 31.4%.

So far this cycle, the only candidate to have reported raising money in the district is Jamie Belsito ($19,200), although Democrats Nathaniel Mulcahy and Lisa Peterson have also filed FEC paperwork. Moulton hasn't. He's busy running for a cabinet job by pretending to be running for president. There are 5 other Democrats trying to figure out if Moulton will run or not before declaring, including Tierney--recruited by Pelosi to run-- and former state legislator Barbara L'Italien.

Sunday, Boston Globe reporter Adrian Walker wrote about how badly things are going for Moulton, a fairly conservative New Dem. Moulton's been pretending to be a real candidate, trying too gain some traction in neighboring New Hampshire and far off Iowa. According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, Moulton is polling so badly nationally that he doesn't show up at all-- so below the 0.3 that conservative Senator Michael Bennet is sporting. Nor does he show up in the Iowa polling. Nor even in New Hampshire! The most recent New Hampshire poll, from Gravis, shows Bernie leading the pack with 21%, followed by Biden at 15% and Elizabeth Warren at 12%. It goes all the way down to 6 candidates polling zero or below-- Cory Booker, Frackenlooper, Marianne Williamson, John Delaney, Bill de Blasio and Steve Bullock... but not Moulton. Walker wrote that America has ignored him since he announced his candidacy in April. "In poll after poll after poll, Moulton has registered at zero percent. Yes, zero. The same number your dog or cat would poll. Yet the Harvard-educated US Marine Corps veteran soldiers on. He has not approached any of the benchmarks for getting onto the overcrowded Democratic debate stage."

[H]is presidential bid always puzzled me. It came on the heels of a disastrously inept campaign to push out Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House. He was the 20th candidate to enter the field. By then, he was, in essence, Just Another White Guy. He has garnered even less support than John Hickenlooper, who got out, or Steve Bullock, who’s on the way out, or that congressman from California whose name never sticks in my head (Eric Swalwell, who’s out.)

Just months ago, Moulton was formidable. Since the moment he was elected to Congress, rumors swirled about him. There was talk that he would demolish Ed Markey head-to-head in a US Senate race. Or that he would be a strong candidate for governor, even though he has never expressed the slightest interest in being governor.

Instead, he led a doomed crusade against Pelosi-- without actually running against her-- and now here he is, at the obvious low point of his formerly gilded political career, stuck in a race he doesn’t even register in.

Why not pack it in? Or, rather, when does he pack it in?

“My experience working with candidates is that they’re the last ones to know,” said Democratic strategist and pollster Brad Bannon. “They’ve invested all their time and energy and money into running for president, and they have a hard time admitting that they’ve failed.”

I wanted to ask Moulton about the future of his faltering campaign last week, but was told that he didn’t have time to get on the phone, given his packed schedule in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But he’s a smart man, and it isn’t as though he can’t read a poll. He has to know this isn’t happening.

With his glittering résumé, good looks, and moderate politics, Moulton always seemed to view himself as a man headed for big, big things. That soaring ambition is now part of his undoing. America simply doesn’t see what he sees when he looks in the mirror. Heaven knows, he’s not the first presidential candidate to pull into Iowa or New Hampshire and discover he isn’t as popular or as famous as he thought he was. Running for president was a premature-- make that a rash-- move.

Moulton clearly isn’t going to be our next president, so what’s next? He has always treated the job he has like a steppingstone to his true destiny, and voters tend to resent that. His time as a congressman could be done.

It certainly isn’t too late to jump into the 2020 Senate race against Markey, but will voters believe he really wants the job? He’s probably a weaker candidate than he would have been six months ago.

What happens to politicians who reach for the big brass ring and end up flailing? That didn’t seem like a question Seth Moulton would ever have to ponder. He’s soon going to have a lot of time to think about it.

Moulton has been telling his pals that what he's really running for is to be Biden's (or whomever's) Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense... or something.