One-time Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has said she is no longer a Democrat following long-running speculation about her political allegiance.
The former Democratic member of Congress said on Tuesday she was leaving the party she once attempted to represent as president – eventually being beaten by Joe Biden for the 2020 nomination.
Ms Gabbard issued a lengthy statement on Tuesday decrying what she has dubbed “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness”, in remarks not dissimilar to Republican attack lines on Mr Biden.
Reasons cited by Ms Gabbard for her departure included the US president’s border policy and Democrat “ideology”, as well as so-called hostility “to people of faith & spirituality” as well as the alleged “demonisation” of the police.
Mr Biden, who is Catholic, has long expressed his support for law enforcement, however – particularly in light of the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6.
Ms Gabbard continued by alleging that today’s Democratic Party also worked to “weaponise the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war”.
Those remarks were in apparent reference to Republican criticism of the Justice Department investigation into former US president Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents, and the US’s support of Ukraine against Russia.
Responding to the news on Twitter on Tuesday morning, many Democrats and political analysts expressed a lack of surprise over the former congresswoman’s departure from the party.
“Tulsi is such a fraud, and shame on every progressive who tried to sell her as one of ‘us’, wrote political pundit Joan Walsh of Ms Gabbard’s comments on “anti-white racism”.
“Wait. You were a Democrat?? Sure could have fooled me,” added MSNBC host Katie Phang.
Ms Gabbard has long expressed criticism of Mr Biden and the Democratic Party as a whole, with the former presidential nominee calling his criticism of Republican attacks on democracy a form of “authoritarian” control designed “to intimidate those who oppose him politically into silence”.
