Cratering poll numbers. Steep cutbacks in ad spending. Open discussion of pulling your name from the ballot in an act of political solidarity with [checks notes] one of your opponents?
For political candidates, these things tend to be signs of a campaign on the verge of suspension. Vivek Ramaswamy either doesn’t know it yet or doesn’t want to show it.
In fact, I’m increasingly convinced Ramaswamy, the lone millennial in the GOP race, is engaging in the classically millennial act of “quiet quitting.”
For the unaware, “quiet quitting” is the term for when someone does the bare minimum requirement for one’s job and for all intents and purposes stops doing anything noteworthy. And that seems like an apt description of the Ramaswamy campaign.
In national and early primary state polling, Ramaswamy is hovering in the single-digit doldrums, which is the reason he’s failed to qualify for the GOP primary debate next week. His campaign recently revealed its plan to suspend all spending on TV ads, right as the primary season is set to take off.
And Ramaswamy, who has demonstrated a stunning level of pro-Trump obsequiousness since announcing his candidacy, is now attempting to encourage fellow GOP candidates to pull their names from Colorado and Maine’s primary ballots in solidarity with Trump, who was ruled ineligible to run in both states over his encouragement and aiding of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“If they remove Trump’s name, my name is off, too, and I call on Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and Chris Christie to do the same thing. Their words are cheap. Action speaks louder than words,” Ramaswamy said Monday in an interview. He’s issued similar urgings repeatedly over the last two weeks. Coming from a candidate whose poll numbers are so meager, threats to remove your name from the presidential ballot sound a lot like rain-checking a party at which you were hardly wanted in the first place.
Needless to say, none of the candidates who’ve been polling better than Ramaswamy have made similar pledges; they’re going to milk what they can out of the primary process. As for Ramaswamy, I’ve long wondered how this particular candidate — a fast-talking political neophyte who tends to portray himself as a know-it-all — would handle the virtually inevitable moment his campaign crashes and burns. Would he admit defeat or devise a way to wind down his presidential bid in a way that saves face in the eyes of Trump-supporters? I think we have our answer.
And it seems Trump does, too, given he’s already counting on Ramaswamy’s endorsement. “He will, I am sure, Endorse me. But Vivek is a good man, and is not done yet!” Trump said on his struggling social media platform in late December.
As a candidate, Ramaswamy appears cooked. But as a pro-Trump stooge? There’s a future for him yet.
