The hopes of desperate Americans who wanted to see the United States finally convert over fully to the metric system were dashed this morning when Democrat candidate and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee sent out word that he was calling a press conference to discuss the future of his campaign. Considering that he was running at roughly, er… zero in the polls, that could only mean one thing. Sure enough, Chafee came out to face the assembled second string press representatives who couldn’t land a spot covering Hillary or Trump and gave them the bad news. (CNN)

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee ended his long-shot bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination Friday, his campaign announced in a statement.

Facing long odds and slumping in the polls, Chafee decided not to run for reelection in 2014. He told CNN last month that he made that decision because he wanted to run for president.

He has been one of the most aggressive candidates against frontrunner Hillary Clinton, calling her out at multiple times about her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq War.

“Considering the premise for invading Iraq was based on falsehoods and considering the ramifications we live with now from that mistake, I would argue that anybody who voted for the Iraq War should not be president and certainly should not be leading the Democratic Party,” he said in an interview with CNN.

Chafee’s exit leaves literally dozens of Democrats in search of a new candidate to support, a transition which could potentially represent a bump in the polls of as much as .001% for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. It’s also going to leave a lot more room around the podiums at the next Democrat debate, particularly with Jim Webb having already exited stage left to ponder an independent run. (For those who wish to watch it, I believe that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has scheduled it for seven minutes at three in the morning on the Food Network on a Sunday.)

At this point we’re only waiting for the apparently delusional Martin O’Malley to pack it in and then the Dems will be down to a two person race. The former Maryland Governor may have been thinking all along that if the rest of the bottom tier candidates dropped out he could pick up their supporters and get more earned media attention to improve his fortunes. That’s not going to happen, though, so when the polls don’t change significantly following Chafee’s exit, he may just throw in the towel also.

Best of luck to you, Governor Chafee. Sadly, your campaign was always hectares wide but only millimeters deep. We’ll close with a few of the more amusing tweets which came out when the news broke.

Clinton and Sanders are in a mad competition to pick up the 0.001% of the voters who were in the Lincoln Chafee camp.

— Dave Brown (@HPEditor) October 23, 2015

Damn. I guess I'm not going to be able to unload all these "Feel The Chafe" T Shirts. Bad investment. https://t.co/xALszmXGPv

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) October 23, 2015

Best Lincoln Chafee joke ever (& let's face it, there are quite a few) via @daveweigel https://t.co/0C7BGe9Kxr pic.twitter.com/b3K3ZaEGop

— Toby Harnden (@tobyharnden) October 23, 2015

Aw man. Announcer mispronounces Chafee's name, as he arrives on stage to drop out of presidential.

— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) October 23, 2015

Chafee was the litre America deserved, but not the litre it needs right now

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 23, 2015