Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who has floated a presidential primary contest against President Biden, said Sunday people want to “turn the page” on the incumbent president when it comes to 2024.
I would love a better candidate than Biden. Unfortunately I have yet to see one. They keep trying to float candidates that are further right, people that would have been solid locks for the Republican party a few decades ago. That is not the direction the party should be going.
So we’ve got RFK jR running as a Republican with a D behind his name, and Manchin and now Phillips floating primary runs against Biden from his right.
It’s so nice watching centrists demonstrate that their commitment to protecting incumbents only applies when challengers come from the left.
tbh don’t we want this in our politics? i know it is ugly right now but post Biden what will the game look like?
i think the right burned itself up and splintered into factions and now the “left” (see center) are also splintering
the group i see as the most united and with the clearest platform are basically the social democrats. hopefully they play the game right and manage to really set up a stronger safety net for the poorest and give space for a middle class again
While the Dems do need a deeper bench, you don’t get there by trying to primary a sitting president. It’s not going to bring anyone new to the ticket. There are several problems:
- You’re going to lose. People who primary Biden are not running because they want to be president, because they know there is not path to victory.
- Biden is already the compromise candidate. Fox screeching about how Biden is a communist doesn’t make him one. Republicans moving so far to the right that they’ve passed over the event horizon doesn’t make Biden a communist, either. You’re not going to get republican defectors, because just being a democrat is the bad part.
- The only thing a primary run will do is hurt the Biden campaign in the general. You can’t win, you can’t recruit more voters to the ticket.
You aren’t deepening the bench by doing that. We had a wide array of candidates going into 2020, and we decided on a center-right safe choice for electability. You don’t deepen the bench with a failed presidential bid against your party’s incumbent.
You deepen the bench by moving people from the House to the Senate with the full support on the democratic committee, replacing people like Feinstein by pushing them out the door if necessary. You do it by advancing younger people to positions of leadership in the party and in national and state congresses. You do it by making sure people like Newsom get air time and national exposure.
I support out of state progressive candidates wherever I can, and I think we need a better organizational tool for doing so. I liked it when the Pod Saves people were trying to help identify the seats that could be flipped, and I’d like to see that extend to the state governments. We need a cohesive strategy designed to take back state governments and judgeships as well as federal offices. We will not get there by running in a primary against an incumbent president.
We do want this in our politics, but when we have fascists calling from inside the house, it’s a luxury we can’t afford right now.
Once fascism is no longer a viable political path for extremists, then we can talk about improving candidate quality and having better options. From where we are currently, though, it feels like putting the cart before the horse.
People have been telling any Democrat that isn’t a neoliberal “now isn’t the right time for what you want” for far longer than I’ve been able to vote and I’m 35. Well I say fuck that. Now is a perfectly fine time, people like you just want your guy to keep winning primaries.
I think that Biden’s challengers from his right are doing so because they think he’ll die before the primaries and want to be the remaining logical choice.
Sure is interesting that they’re willing to splinter the party when centrists call for perfect lockstep unity behind incumbents when it suits them.
RFK Jr is his own thing but neither Manchin or Phillips are actually running. You can’t call people hypocrites for not doing something they think other people shouldn’t do.
And who is this guy?
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) does not speak for me. I disagree.
Better title: “Dean Phillips Thinks He Should Be President Instead”
This guy’s mom told him he’d do a great job and now he thinks the entire country is rallying around him.
