The Atlantic

Why Steve Bullock Refuses to Drop Out

Members of the Clinton diaspora are pleading with the Montana governor to stay in the race, even if the rest of the country doesn’t know who he is.
Source: Brian Snyder / Reuters

Updated at 2:55 p.m. ET on September 19, 2019

Former Vice President Joe Biden markets himself as the candidate who can actually make government work. Montana Governor Steve Bullock takes that pitch a step further, thinking about what happens if people lose any more faith in the system. I recently asked Bullock if he’s scared of where that leads. Is it anarchy? Is it The Purge?

“Is it anarchy?” Bullock replied. “Or is it fascism?”

Bullock told me he worries that “if we reelect Donald Trump, America's at a breaking point.” He likes to point out that he’s the only Democrat in this year’s (giant) field who won a state that Trump carried in 2016. He was reelected by Montana voters on the same night they overwhelmingly pulled the lever for Trump. The feeling of those voters, according to Bullock, was, “Finally, somebody is going to clean up Washington D.C.,” referring to Trump. He continued: “We’ve seen what’s happened, and they haven’t seen an economy where Trump's actually helping them out along the way,” Bullock said. “Folks that are just saying, ‘I’m

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