The Party Left Her
By 
Tulsi Gabbard is leaving Congress:
Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard announced on her presidential campaign website today that she will not seek reelection to Congress in 2020.
“Mahalo, Hawaii,” the message says on the Tulsi Gabbard for President website.
She also asks the people of Hawaii for their support for her candidacy for president of the United States.
“I believe I can best serve the people of Hawaii and our country as your President and Commander-in-Chief,” she writes on the website.
Since Gabbard is a below-replacement-level representative in a safe seat, Kai Kahele figures to be a massive improvement. What’s not clear is what party’s nomination she’s actually running for, since it certainly doesn’t seem to be the Democratic one:
In a podcast last week, Hillary Clinton said an unidentified female 2020 Democratic presidential candidate is being groomed by Republicans to challenge the eventual Democratic nominee and help President Trump, with support from “a bunch” of Russian “sites and bots.” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) assumed (correctly) that Clinton was referring to her, and she really poured on the umbrage.
To prove Clinton wrong, Gabbard went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Thursday night — she and Hannity both touted mistaken initial reporting that Clinton had claimed Russia, not Republicans, were “grooming” her for a third-party run — and blamed Clinton (a former senator and secretary of state) for the last 18 years of U.S. wars, then echoed Republican complaints about the “transparency” of the House impeachment inquiry. “I don’t know what’s going on in those closed doors, we in Congress don’t have access to the information that is being shared,” said Gabbard, who isn’t among the 59 Democrats and 48 Republicans who do have access.
And she’s meeting with the kind of people who will be trying to line up a third party run if Warren wins the nomination, so…