Dean who?
Yes, that was my reaction too. Dean Phillips is a third-term congressman from the Minneapolis suburbs who announced this week that he was entering the race to be the Democratic Party nominee for president.
After stifling a yawn, you should know that Dean Phillips doesn’t have a prayer to win the nomination. But he very well may be the catalyst that will drive Joe Biden out of the race and throw the Democratic Party into absolute, total, delicious chaos.
Fifty-five years ago, another Democrat from Minnesota threw down the gauntlet and challenged another Democratic president. Senator Eugene McCarthy also didn’t have a chance to win the nomination. He had even less money than Phillips is going to have. But he had an army of volunteers who descended on New Hampshire like a plague of locusts — organizing, holding rallies, manning phone banks, and spreading the word that Lyndon Johnson was vulnerable.
At the time, Johnson hadn’t even declared for re-election. In fact, he wasn’t even on the ballot. Johnson was so sure of victory in New Hampshire that he ran as a write-in candidate.
McCarthy — a quiet, unassuming loner in the Senate — ran against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The war barely registered as an issue before McCarthy made it the centerpiece of his campaign.
The results of the primary shocked the nation and blew the Democratic Party wide open. McCarthy won 40% of the vote and held Johnson to less than 50% of the tally.
The primary was on March 12. On March 31, Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the race. The president who won re-election in 1964 in the biggest landslide in American history in 1964 was out.
Dean Phillips also has one issue that he will hammer the incumbent president with. And Republicans may thank him for it.
“I am younger,” the 54-year-old congressmember told NBC News on Friday afternoon. He also referred to Biden’s five-decade service in Washington as part of the problem.
Phillips hasn’t yet been tested as a candidate in major polling, so it’s certainly possible he could gain some traction. He’d face a significant challenge siphoning support from Biden, though. Not only have primary voters continued to fall in line behind the president, the Democratic National Committee’s election calendar will make it hard for Phillips to gain momentum.
The danger for Biden, then, isn’t that Phillips is a threat in the primary. It’s that a Phillips candidacy could further expose a major Biden vulnerability at a time when the president is desperate to shore up his poll numbers in battleground states ahead of a likely general-election rematch with former President Donald Trump.
One more similarity between Phillips and Eugene McCarthy is that Biden, like Johnson, will not be on the New Hampshire primary ballot. At Biden’s insistence, the Democratic National Committee decided to penalize states that tried to jump ahead of South Carolina in the primary order.
The February 3 South Carolina primary — payback to Rep. James Clyburn who saved Biden’s candidacy in 2020 — was to be “first in the nation.” Historically, that’s New Hampshire’s title. And Granite State Democrats were livid. They announced that they will do whatever it takes to be first.
As a penalty, the DNC is warning the state that holding the primary before South Carolina may mean they will lose their delegates to the Chicago convention in July. Or they may be given less than a full vote per delegate. Whatever the DNC decides is irrelevant. Biden forced these rule changes on the DNC and he now must abide by them.
Whatever the fate of New Hampshire’s delegates, it’s immaterial to the fate of Biden’s presidency.
After a rough primary, the party scrambles to bridge intraparty divides and coalesce voters behind the nominee; that’s not usually supposed to be a concern for the incumbent. The attacks are supposed to come from the other side.
But now Biden’s biggest weak spot isn’t just being exploited by Republicans, and he won’t just have to figure out how to neutralize those attacks in next year’s general. Anything Phillips does to emphasize Biden’s age could amplify GOP messaging.
And in a hyper-competitive match-up between Biden and Trump, every small thing can be hugely impactful.
Could history repeat itself? Could Phillips draw enough support away from Biden by hammering away at his age that the president is so damaged that he could contemplate dropping out?
It’s unlikely, but not impossible.
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