(ICYMI: Just at the moment the polls looked like they were going to qualify me to get into the second debate—every poll since Monmouth that included my name had me at 1%—the DNC changed the rules, so that nothing that happens now could qualify me for the second debate.)

Grateful to all the friends who’ve written with kindness and concern after the announcement this afternoon that because the DNC has changed the rules for the debate, I have suspended my campaign.

I’m fine. Really.

There’s a reality that the will to reform can’t bend — like mortgage payments (first lesson for presidential candidate wanna-be’s: be a Senator first, so your salary can be paid while you’re running for President), and the need to raise money to keep a campaign alive. I was eager and happy to ask for support for the campaign when there was a prospect of getting into the debates. When there wasn’t, I couldn’t in good faith make that ask. When that’s true, a campaign must end.

I will miss more than anything the one bit I wasn’t sure I’d like — speaking to voters to ask for their vote. That was greatest fun I’ve ever had (professionally) because so quickly do you see how much people really care. Those exchanges — at the senior center where we launched the campaign, at the NH and Iowa events after the launch, etc. — were the best thing in the world. This part I loved.

But I will regret forever not having a real chance at the debates to press the one real issue that is before us as a democracy, and that the other candidates just are not addressing: At the core of our democracy there is a hole where the Framers meant there to be a Congress. That crippled and corrupted institution will block progress until it is fixed. We desperately need a politics that can talk about that, and begin to talk about how it could be fixed. That is not just “campaign finance reform.” That is not just about “getting money out of politics.” It is an agenda for reforming a failed institution, by building on the cross-partisan recognition there is that this critical part of our democracy is broken.

We need that issue to become central, because that is the only way that failed institution will ever be fixed. And fixing that failed institution is the only way we will ever have any any chance of addressing sensibly the long list of problems this nation must address.

This a hard point to make in the middle of a political party. Maybe it is a point better made outside of party primaries. We’ll see. For now, there’s just some sleep and time with the kids to think about. Seriously happy time ahead.

Thanks again to all.