However unlikely it is that Dean Phillips would win the Democratic nominee next year, he nevertheless represents a serious threat to President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.
In the first in the nation primary state of New Hampshire, where Biden won’t even be on the ballot in January, the little-known, third-term congressmember from the Minneapolis suburbs made his primary challenge official this week.
However, despite serious reservations, Democratic voters have showed little interest in supporting anyone else but Biden. According to the polls, there is just one real opportunity for Phillips to win over some of those voters, and it is the same Biden flaw that he has been emphasising all along—the president’s advanced age of 80.
“I am younger,” the 54-year-old lawmaker said to NBC News on Friday afternoon, calling Biden’s five decades in federal government “actually part of the problem.”
The fact that most Democrats who say they will vote for Biden again in the primary are concerned that he is too elderly suggests that this argument could sway some Democratic primary voters in Phillips’ favour. However, it is not likely to convince enough of them to pose a serious challenge to Biden’s nomination.
Since Phillips hasn’t been put to the test in any significant polling, his potential success isn’t completely ruled out. However, stealing votes away from Biden would be a major obstacle for him to overcome. The Democratic National Committee’s election timeline will also make it difficult for Phillips to gain momentum, as primary voters have continued to queue behind the president.
Biden’s primary opponent Phillips isn’t the real threat. It’s because, with a rematch with former President Trump likely, a Phillips candidature may further reveal a significant Biden vulnerability at a time when the president is desperately trying to boost his poll numbers in battleground states.
Primary assaults could easily feed concerns about Biden’s age and leadership abilities, which are already his greatest problem with swing voters. A direct attack on Biden’s age may help a theme the GOP plans to use in the next year’s general election.
Biden’s age is a major liability that the GOP may easily exploit in the general election, and the more voters are exposed to this message now, the greater the potential that it will come to define him. This means that voters will be exposed to these arguments more sooner and more frequently. With fewer than three months until the primary, Phillips, the millionaire liquor and gelato tycoon, is likely to use his own resources at the outset of this race to get his message out.
There is widespread concern among Democrats that a third run for president by Joe Biden will hurt the party’s chances. Among registered Democrats and those who lean Democratic, only 33% wanted Biden to be the party’s 2024 nominee, while 67% chose someone else, according to a national survey conducted by CNN/SSRS in late August.
It’s possible that Phillips is exaggerating when he calls Biden’s poll numbers “horrific” as he did on Friday. However, he is correct that Americans care about more than just Biden’s age.
According to a study done by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Centre in August, 77% of all Americans (including 69% of Democrats) believe Biden is too elderly to be president.
Those who support Biden in New Hampshire, where Phillips hopes to spring an early upset, are concerned by his advanced years. A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll taken last month found that 63% of Democratic primary voters who supported Biden cited the president’s age as their main issue.
The congressman from Minnesota has already hinted that this will play a significant role in his case. Even though Trump is only three years younger than Biden, he may be a more effective communicator.
And the party base as a whole is concerned about Biden’s advanced age. Sixty-eight percent of white Democrats, 64 percent of people of colour, 66 percent of liberal Democrats, and 67 percent of moderates and conservatives all said in an August CNN/SSRS poll that they would prefer a different nominee.
The two most noticeable differences were in age and education. Voters who identified as Democrats but who did not complete college were slightly more likely to believe the party should pick another nominee (71% vs. 62%). And among Democrats, those under the age of 45 were substantially more likely to have a different choice than Biden (77%) than those over the age of 45 (59%).
In a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll conducted last month, Biden received 78% of the vote in a hypothetical Democratic primary battle, but just 72% of the vote from Democrats under the age of 35 and 68% of the vote from Democrats who did not complete high school.
Two-thirds of Democratic primary voters are concerned about a second term for Vice President Joe Biden, but they haven’t shown much interest in the president’s intraparty opponents. And convincing those voters will be challenging.
Three-quarters of Biden backers are “definitely decided” in their primary vote, according to a recent poll. Nearly as many people (69%) said they would vote for Biden regardless of whether or not he filed to run. (State authorities will likely move the conventional primary up the calendar earlier than the Democratic National Committee’s guidelines allow.)
And any support Phillips receives in New Hampshire might rapidly fizzle out due to the DNC’s primary election schedule.
According to my colleague Elena Schneider, who was in New Hampshire with the newly minted candidate on Friday, Phillips’ strategist Steve Schmidt said the candidate is focusing on New Hampshire (primary date uncertain, but likely on Jan. 23), South Carolina (set for Feb. 3), and Michigan (Feb. 27).
Candidates would not get any delegates from the New Hampshire primary since the state government is expected to choose a date that conflicts with the DNC’s preferences. A win or good showing in New Hampshire may put Phillips over the top and disgrace Biden.
But Black voters in South Carolina’s primary election were the ones who ultimately chose Biden as the Democratic nominee in 2020. Phillips may be giving South Carolina his undivided attention, but there’s a good reason why Biden advocated for the state to be given more prominence in the DNC’s schedule reorganisation.
The next state to vote is Nevada, on February 6th, after South Carolina. The time to submit paperwork passed earlier this month, and Phillips did not qualify to be on the ballot.
If Phillips doesn’t do exceptionally well in South Carolina, his performance in Michigan, one week before Super Tuesday, will be decisive. New Hampshire’s surge probably won’t persist.
However, even a little challenge could have an impact on the election as a whole. They fear that the nominee will emerge from particularly contentious primaries so battered that they will be at a disadvantage in the general election.
These kind of worries are prevalent in presidential primaries, and they are shared by Democrats in the 2020 election as well as by supporters of both major parties in the wide-open 2016 race. In a reelection campaign, where the incumbent is a known quantity who has gone through the election wringer before (and won) and normally faces minimal competition, this is usually less of a concern.
Incumbents aren’t normally expected to have to worry about uniting their party behind a nominee after a contentious primary. The adversary is assumed to launch the attacks.
However, suddenly the Republicans aren’t the only ones capitalising on Biden’s biggest weakness, so he won’t simply have to figure out how to counter those assaults in the general election next year. Phillips may help the GOP’s cause by doing anything that draws attention to Biden’s advanced years.
Every little thing matters in the extremely close race between Biden and Trump.