This is just pathetic: Seven candidates have qualified for the August Republican presidential primary debate. Six of them are not Donald Trump—and Mike Pence is not one of those six.

Some Dude Vivek Ramaswamy has qualified for the debate—and is polling ahead of Pence. Doug Burgum, governor of the fourth least populous U.S. state, has qualified for the debate. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is in the race expressly to troll Trump, has qualified. Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott join them on the list, as do, of course, Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump probably won’t even bother to show up.

But Mike Pence, the former vice president of the United States, has not qualified for this debate. Again: This is pathetic.

To qualify for the debate, candidates must have 40,000 unique donors—including at least 200 in each of 20 states—to their campaigns and must have pulled at least 1% in two qualifying national polls and two qualifying state polls (from different states). Pence has the polling: He does not have the 40,000 donors. And when a candidate with very high name recognition is polling over 5% but cannot get as many donors as candidates with lower name recognition polling at more like 3% … it does not suggest that the first guy, let’s call him Pence, has very strong support. It suggests, in fact, that his current 5.9% in the national polling average is artificially inflated by his high name recognition. It indicates that very few people actually support Pence with any conviction.

What’s really pathetic about this is that Pence could have gotten more attention by taking a stand and saying it was bad that Trump sent a mob of his supporters to attempt to kill Pence in the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He could have looked courageous and principled, and while his apparent calculation that there’s not much of a market for that in the Republican Party is correct, the people who believe he helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump are never going to vote for him anyway. He might as well make a real play for some of the people who are left. But the Mike Pence we watched lavishly kiss Trump’s ass for four years may not have that in him.

Pence is expressing optimism that he’ll eke out the 40,000 donors he needs. It’s embarrassing for him—and hilarious to the rest of us—that he’s not there yet.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.