For all of my mentioning of the Republican presidential primaries, the Democratic presidential primaries received scant attention and for good reason. Effectively selected to be a coronation like in 2016 and 2020 from the onset between the superdelegate fiasco of 2016 to the Jim Clyburn endorsement/Elizabeth Warren vote-siphoning of 2020, the effort to control who is the party nominee has been in play for the better part of eight years now. This is relevant to the 2024 race when the Robert Kennedy Jr. campaign announced its independent campaign in protest and Congressman Dean Phillips launched a quixotic bid for the White House based on age that ultimately went nowhere. For Marianne Williamson, allegations of workplace abusive behavior and a battlefield of love appear to have underserved her once more. With that being said, what has become of Dean Phillips who was once a rising star in Democratic politics?
The bridges appear to have been burned with the DNC for daring to challenge their heir apparent with Sam Brodey of The Daily Beast saying that Phillips has decided not to run for his congressional seat or any future office in Minnesota again. When chalking up his decision not to run with Katie Porter (D-CA), it’s hard to tell which one of the two figures had a worse decision-making process when calculating their political moves in 2024. While my money would still be that Phillips could stage a comeback and has feasibility in Democratic politics or his brewery depending on which he decides to pursue, he would still need to explain to primary voters who saw him run against Biden why he sacrificed it all to put a nominally competitive Hennepin County congressional district at risk just to make a point about age.
To underscore the underperformance of Dean Phillips in the Democratic primaries so far, the primary season has a winner with Joe Biden decidedly winning re-nomination which was expected, but Phillips underperforms with about 3% of the vote. Granted, that was 3% of the entire Democratic coalition that came out to support him over Biden nationally, but was that worth the alienation of the 86% that supported Biden that will now be looking more critically at Phillips moving forward? It’s also telling that the one contest that Joe Biden lost was in American Samoa where Biden lost initially in 2020 where a little-known candidate named Jason Palmer won the little-contested event by about 20 votes, but I digress.
Thus, the main point of interest this campaign season for Democrats appears to be the “Uncommitted” vote which has been spearheaded by the false reporting of genocide in Gaza where Israel has been accused of committing war crimes. This comes after the October 7th attacks where over a thousand Israelis and nationals from other countries were either killed or kidnapped by Hamas, something that initially drew widespread condemnation. While there are points to be made about Benjamin Netanyahu being a career politician and having been in office too long by American standards (the United States follows a two-term four year term-limit standard), the anti-Semitism that has been festering on apps like TikTok and among certain wings of the Democratic Party such as the Progressive Caucus have led concerns that Joe Biden will lose the next election in battlegrounds like Michigan and Minnesota because of a decline of turnout among the youth and Arab American vote.
Sources: 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries – Wikipedia
TikTok Pushes Back Against Claims It Fuels Antisemitism – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The Conservatarian Millennial 