After months of poor performances at the polls that culminated in a string of humiliating defeats on Super Tuesday, Rep. Dean Phillips dropped out of the Democratic primary race Wednesday.
In a post on X, Phillips finally acknowledged that his pitch to his party as a viable alternative to President Joe Biden’s candidacy was a dud.
“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again — because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options,” the Minnesota Democrat wrote.
“But it is clear that alternative is not me,” Phillips added before swiftly endorsing Biden, who he has argued for months would lose the general election against Trump.
In 2011, I hosted then VP Biden at my home. Most notable was his empathy and kindness to my daughters and the catering staff, with whom he sat and had ice cream (surprise-surprise). His decency and wisdom were rarities in politics then, and even more so today.
— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) March 6, 2024
Over a decade… pic.twitter.com/CN19pFqitE
Phillips’ long-shot campaign hardly registered in an election in which a Biden-Trump matchup seemed almost inevitable.
Although Phillips made it clear that he believed Democrats need an alternative candidate if they want to avoid a second Trump term, his candidacy — and his seemingly haphazard campaign platform — was overwhelmingly unconvincing to voters. He won only one county in all of the state primaries, nabbing 11 votes in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, on Tuesday to Biden’s 6. He was also soundly defeated in his home state of Minnesota that night, coming in third behind Biden and “uncommitted.” Throughout it all, Phillips continued to post with whimsy. He congratulated Biden for “whooping” him in South Carolina, then congratulated the other candidates — including the “uncommitted” vote — for “demonstrating more appeal” than he had on Super Tuesday. He joked about not being a sufficiently viable contender to poll in a matchup against Trump, and he quipped that his losses at least made Biden look good. Phillips showed that he was stubborn enough to stay in the race this long and comfortable enough to post self-deprecatingly about his weak performances — to an extent that it seemed like he might not be taking his presidential bid seriously. Ultimately, nobody else did either.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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