"Voters Have Outright Rejected Dean Phillips"

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes she is making sense, telling Jake Tapper

Right now, when it comes to the President's age, folks are talking about how he's 81 but first of all we have to look- first of all, Donald Trump is around the same age- he's 77 years old, they could have gone to high school together.

They didn't. Middle class Joe was in Delaware and attended a private (Roman Catholic) preparatory school in Delaware  and Donald J. Trump attended New York Military Academy, a private boarding school 60 miles north of NYC.  If they had gone to the same high school, Trump probably wouldn't have been even a freshman while Biden was a senior. Today, they are both seniors. And a lot can happen to an individual between age 82- when Trump would be completing a second term- and age 86, when Biden would be completing a second term. A lot.

The New York congresswoman continues

.... and beyond that, Donald Trump has ninety-one indictments.  And I know who I'm going to choose. It's going to be one of the most successful Presidents in modern American history, that passed the Inflation Reduction Act, that got us the American Rescue Plan, that ensured we could pass one of the largest investments in climate change in U.S. history.

(Sarcasm ahead.) It's heartening to learn that Ocasio-Cortez is going to vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Hopefully, it's not a close call for her. She deserves no argument on assessing Biden "one of the most successful Presidents in modern American history." No doubt, justifiably, she would not suggest a Republican President has been more successful. Therefore- depending upon her definition of modern- the young congresswoman may be comparing the incumbent against Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter. If so, she could have omitted "one of" from her evaluation.

That may be nitpicking but it's not nitpicking to inform the congresswoman that Donald J. Trump is facing nor 91 indictments but four indictments. Presumably, she was referring to the 91 total counts with which he is being charged. By going with ninety-one indictments, Ocasio-Cortez was off by nearly 2300%. A rudimentary understanding of criminal justice is not one of the strong points of the congresswoman who, not coincidentally, was one of the most prominent and ardent supporters of the misguided Black Lives Matter movement.

Ocasio-Cortez added

And as far as we know, as we know, virtually all of the filing deadlines have passed. There's already been a primary, voters have outright rejected Dean Phillip. President Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee.

in which AOC describes Biden as "one on most successful presidents in modern American history" -- a statement that shouldn't be controversial on the left but is, sadly https://t.co/Tf1Kd3EHay

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 14, 2024

Well, of course, they have done so. The Democratic National Committee, in defiance of tradition (and why would tradition matter to a 77-year-old who has spent his entire career in politics), moved the primary in the Republican state of South Carolina. ahead of votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. President Biden explained that race was the explicit rationale for the move when he wrote the DNC

For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process. We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.

This is what can happen when individuals, including the President of the USA, prioritize race over everything. The will not level with the public.

The Democratic Party does not rely on South Carolina in elections. The last time a Democratic nominee captured So. Carolina in a presidential election was in 1976 (remember disco? bell bottom jeans?) and Joe Biden lost the state in 2020 by 11.7 percentage points. Knowing he won't win it in 2024, he won't campaign there in the general election. Democrats do not "rely on these voters in elections" nor have they "not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar." Biden gained the nomination in 2020 because of South Carolina's voters, and only because of South Carolina's voters. If he- like most of the Party movers and shakers- didn't recognize that, they wouldn't have maneuvered the state into first place in this cycle's process.

Joe Biden is going to be re-nominated (unless he expectedly withdraws) the Democratic nomination. However, it's not going to be because of the impressive record cited by Ocasio-Cortez in brief. As he realizes, he was nominated in 2020 because of African-American voters and, whatever his mental state now, he was smart enough four years ago to buy himself insurance against rejection by Democratic elites or Democratic voters (of whatever race). Vice-President Kamala Harris may have been a mediocre Senator and bad state Attorney General (both) and is very unpopular but her status as first in line to the presidency has scared away Democrats otherwise considering a challenge to Joe Biden.. Veteran Democratic strategist and Harris supporter Karen Finney was quoted by NBC News last September as warning

When you had people who were trying to test the waters, the party rose up and made it clear to those individuals- who were mostly white men- that to disrespect the vice president would not be well received by women and people of color within the party. They got a little bit of a smack in the face.

Notwithstanding the congresswoman's claim to the contrary, Joe Biden could, and would, be replaced on the ballot if the Party's power brokers wished. They do not, and it's not because of whatever filing deadlines have passed, because he has governed far better than the last Democratic President (never acknowledged), or because he won big in a Democratic primary against a United States Representative no one outside of Minnesota has heard of. Party establishment could replace Joe Biden on the ballot if it chose but the affront to the vice-president is more important than defeating Donald Trump. 

The reason is fairly obvious but cannot be uttered in polite company. Joe Biden appears to be (politically, anyway) dead man walking. But to many Democrats, some things are more important than defeating Donald Trump. 

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Heading Into a Racial Buzzsaw

In a candidacy that is equal parts bold and bizarre, United States Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota has announced a run for the Democratic nomination for President.

"The irony," as William Conrad intoned at the beginning of each television episode of The Fugitive, "(is) Richard Kimble is innocent." The irony here, after eight years of Barack Obama and four of Donald Trump, the country has had the benefit of almost three years of a productive and effective presidency. And unlike the last Democratic President, Joe Biden is being challenged- sort of- from within his own party.

As this article by Tim Alberta in The Atlantic suggests, Phillips, a member of the centrist, bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, is not challenging Biden on ideological grounds. Nor is he running because he believes that the incumbent has been a bad President. Interviewing Phillips at the latter's Virginia farmhouse on October 20, Alberta found a congressman fearful that Joe Biden is dead man walking, a clear underdog to Donald Trump.

After spending portions of 2022 "cultivating relationships with powerful donors, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, who had offered their assistance in recruiting a challenger to Biden," Phillips was still undecided, with Democratic heavyweights warning him that a challenge to the incumbent would only impede the latter's re-election in 2024.  This summer, he

began asking House Democratic colleagues for the personal phone numbers of governors in their states. Some obliged him; others ignored the request or refused it. Phillips tried repeatedly to get in touch with these governors. Only two got back to him—Whitmer in Michigan, and J. B. Pritzker in Illinois—but neither one would speak to the congressman directly. “They had their staff take the call,” Phillips told me. “They wouldn’t take the call.”

Eventually "feeling hopeless," Phillips made a few last-ditch phone calls, pleading and praying that someone might step forward. No one did and in the first week of September

several major polls dropped, the collective upshot of which proved more worrisome than anything Phillips had witnessed to date. One survey, from The Wall Street Journal, showed Trump and Biden essentially tied, but reported that 73 percent of registered voters considered Biden “too old” to run for president, with only 47 percent saying the same about Trump, who is just three and a half years younger. Another poll, conducted for CNN, showed that 67 percent of Democratic voters wanted someone other than Biden as the party’s nominee.

The Minnesota congressman, who appears to lack the ego of a US Senator, governor, or celebrity who might seek the presidency, seems to be the ultimate reluctant candidate. "In the run-up to his launch," Alberta remarks, "Phillips tried to speak with the president—to convey his respect before entering the race. On Thursday night, he said, the White House got back to him: Biden would not be talking to Phillips." Moreover, as Alberta interviewed him

the less energized Phillips seemed by the idea of dethroning Biden. He insisted that his first ad-making session focus on saluting the president, singing his opponent’s praises into the cameras in ways that defy all known methods of campaigning. He told me, unsolicited, that his “red line” is March 6, the day after Super Tuesday, at which point he will “wrap it up” and “get behind the president in a very big way” if his candidacy fails to gain traction. He repeatedly drifted back to the notion that he might unwittingly assist Trump’s victory next fall.

Despite an effective President, voters believe the recovery is faltering and the incumbent is too old to serve a second term. Nonetheless, signaling that he is expecting to quit the race before the spring equinox is no way for Phillips to run a campaign if he is determined to win. Yet, as bizarre as this effort is, it is equally bold.

So believing that President Biden's message has not been heard by voters and that he is hampered by age, a somewhat unknown member of the U.S. House has launched a campaign extremely treacherous for a Democratic hopeful. Alberta writes

In a year’s worth of conversations with other party leaders, Phillips told me, “everybody, without exception,” shares his fear about Joe Biden’s fragility—political and otherwise—as he seeks a second term. This might be hyperbole, but not by much: In my own recent conversations with party officials, it was hard to find anyone who wasn’t jittery about Biden. Phillips’s problem is that they refuse to say so on the record. Democrats claim to view Trump as a singular threat to the republic, the congressman complains, but for reasons of protocol and self-preservation they have been unwilling to go public with their concerns about Biden, making it all the more likely, in Phillips’s view, that the former president will return to office.

In the past fifteen months, Alberta explains, Phillips

name-dropped some Democratic governors on television and made personal calls to others, urging someone, anyone, to jump into the Democratic race. What he encountered, he thought, was a dangerous dissonance: Some of the president’s allies would tell him, in private conversations, to keep agitating, to keep recruiting, that Biden had no business running in 2024—but that they weren’t in a position to do anything about it.

In an underrated irony

What made this duplicity especially maddening to Phillips, he told me, is that Democrats have seen its pernicious effects on the other side of the political aisle. For four years during Trump’s presidency, Democrats watched their Republican colleagues belittle Trump behind closed doors, then praise him to their base, creating a mirage of support that ultimately made them captives to the cult of Trumpism.

Phillips made clear to Alberta that he found no equivalence between Biden and Trump. Certainly, there is no cult of Bidenism to rival Trumpism or even Obamism, the latter the Democratic Party's irrational fealty to President 44. Nonetheless- and despite the incumbent seemingly headed for defeat in twelve months- no Democrat stood up to challenge Biden even as, according to Phillips/Alberta, the Minnesotan was told "to keep agitating, to keep recruiting."

This would be baffling, if it were. But it is not, because the answer is hiding in plain sight.  While having written an otherwise excellent article, neither Alberta nor the courageous (if misguidedly centrist) Phillips will even mention, let alone acknowledge, why no Democrat who believes Biden is going to get beaten will challenge him.  In an important, conveniently ignored piece in early September, two NBC reporters found

Biden allies have not been shy about getting the word out that it would be self-defeating for ambitious white male candidates like Newsom to try to snatch the nomination away from Biden and Kamala Harris, who made history as the first woman and person of color to become vice president.

Consider the past: A string of Democratic candidates who failed to lock down Black voters went on to lose the race for the party's nomination — including Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Hillary Clinton in 2008.

“When you had people who were trying to test the waters” for a presidential bid, “the party rose up and made it clear to those individuals — who were mostly white men — that to disrespect the vice president would not be well received by women and people of color within the party,” said Karen Finney, a longtime Democratic strategist. “They got a little bit of a smack in the face.”

In the words of the legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey, "now you know the rest of the story."  Potential candidates were reluctant to stand up not because they adore the incumbent, nor only because it might hurt him in the general election. The major reason has been race.

Let's clarify: R-A-C-E. (Gender is playing a secondary role.) Karen Finney warned "the party rose up and made it clear to those individuals — who were mostly white men — that to disrespect the vice president would not be well received by women and people of color within the party. They got a little bit of a smack in the face."

She said the quiet part out loud and no one responded publicly. Cenk Uygur has claimed that he asked prominent Democrats to challenge Biden and no one took the bait. Dean Phillips evidently did all he could to get someone interested but found no takers. Uygur is now in the race, despite being ineligible for the office. Phillips declared for the office on Thursday, but reluctantly. His chance of being nominated is only slightly better than that of Uygur, not the least because he's more committed to defeating Trump than he is to his own candidacy.

Dean Phillips did not get the memo. To Finney and the party hierarchy, Kamala Harris is no more and no less than a black woman- so proceed with caution. Every Democratic politician has responded as required. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, and don't even think about getting in the way of Kamala Harris. The rather brave Dean Phillips has made his future as a Democrat extremely precarious, even more so than Joe Biden's future as a President.

 

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