{ Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said Sunday he wants President Biden to stand down on his 2024 Democratic presidential primary bid to give another Democrat a shot at the White House.
Why it matters: Phillips has previously called on others to challenge Biden in the 2024 Democratic nomination but is not committing himself to running as of yet.
- “I would like to see Joe Biden, a wonderful and remarkable man, pass the torch — cement this extraordinary legacy,” Phillips said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
- “And by the way, this is not how everybody thinks, but I do believe the majority wants to move on,” he added.
- Phillips said his views on Biden stepping down are not based on the president’s age but rather “how people feel.”
By the numbers: 56% of U.S. adults said they had an unfavorable opinion of Biden, compared to just 32% of those with favoring opinions on the president, according to a CNN poll in June.
- Prospective voters in the CNN poll also had an unfavorable view of former President Donald Trump at 59%.
- An April poll from NBC News revealed that 70% of Americans think Biden should not seek another term. Of those responses, 51% came from Democrats.
- 60% of those polled by NBC also thought Trump shouldn’t run for president again. Of those, a third identified themselves as Republican voters.
- “Joe Biden right now is down seven points in the four swing states that will decide the next election,” said Phillips, who also pointed to Biden’s historically low approval numbers.
- Phillips added that he’s not saying Biden is “not up to a second term,” but that the numbers reflect that Americans want change and a new Democratic candidate. }
This is a common sentiment for people to have, but their preference runs into a major problem. There is no magic “young Biden” candidate out there that can unify the party.
If Biden announced tomorrow that he was going to retire rather than run for reelection, there would be an absolute clusterfuck circus of everyone and their mom’s roommate’s cousin’s dog jumping into the dem primary. Sanders — who is even older than Biden — has even implied that he would run in this scenario. Harris would get a lot of institutional support, but nowhere near enough to clear the field. Newsom would jump in. A solid half dozen house representatives with no real chance would jump in. As would some other has-beens or insufficiently qualified people. A few governors would take the chance too. It would take months for the race to whittle down to the core 5-6 people with any real chance, and by that time >$100m would have been pissed down the drain. Any establishment candidate that won would be met with instant distrust from large parts of the progressive left, and any progressive candidate that won would be met with similar levels of distrust from the rest of the party.
The primary would be acrimonious, expensive, and long. Dems would toss aside one of their biggest advantages going into next year — money — as Trump is more likely than not to tie up the republican primary comparatively early.
“We need a younger, popular person to be our nominee” is a trivial thing to wish for. It’s an exceedingly non-trivial thing to make happen. Every person pining for such a person is imagining very different democrats as fitting that description.
The time for new is 2028. We picked Biden in 2020 and picking a candidate one year comes with an implicit outcome of picking them in the next election, if they win the first time.
I agree that it’ll be a challenge. On the other hand, the dude is just too fucking old. I’ll absolutely vote against him in the primary.
We can do better, and we should.
Who’s running against him in the primary?
You’re right about what a clusterfuck it would be, I’m glad you are well aware of the Sad Sorry State of the Democratic Party.
The Easy Solution for that ClusterFuck is to maybe not try to rig the primary against Sanders. But of course they won’t do that. They will waste hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure they get another corporate puppet in there who has as much of a chance of winning as Biden.
That again, does not disprove the fact that Biden is deeply unpopular and his election is not a safe bet. Especially if the long predicted economic crisis comes to pass or any other number of things could happen. I would be happier if Biden himself just made more commitments to progressive issues, ending the blockade or cuba or freeing political prisoners could be done with a strike of the pen. But we know he won’t do anything like that.
This is strange logic honestly, as the DNC said in court in 2017 about having fair and impartial primaries “There’s no contractual obligation” for us to elect him again.
That bit about waiting about 2028 is rich, why would the DNC change then? I doubt the threat of fascism would go away, they probably would have made more gains by then. They will say ‘not this year, next time’ forever. Maybe send that back to the thinktank and see if you can be not so transparent lol
The DNC is going to do this charade of trying to browbeat and guilt trip young and minority voters into getting out the vote like they did in 2016, and I don’t think it’s gonna work. because that’s not how you win elections. You win elections by mobilizing voters, offering them things they want and delivering - the dems want to do everything but give people what they want and then wonder why they lose to a party 75% of the country hates
I’m just not seeing the problem with having a real battle of a primary and the chance for a decent candidate to emerge on top for the general. I’m really not.
You say money, but I’m sure a lot of people are more likely to donate for someone they like in both the primary and then the general (even if that’s different candidates)