Still, Phillips’s provocative comments are similar to some recent onslaughts on Biden from Trump, who has tried to deflect from what many regard as his own embrace of authoritarian stances. A wealthy entrepreneur who flipped a Minneapolis suburban congressional district in 2018 and had previously backed Biden, Phillips has sharpened his denunciations after gaining little traction against an incumbent heavily favored to win renomination.
The Democratic challenger is criticizing Biden after Florida Democrats decided to make the incumbent the only candidate on the primary ballot and Biden opted to skip the ballot in New Hampshire, a state that is violating newly installed party rules by jumping ahead of South Carolina, which Biden won roundly in the 2020 primary, in the nomination process. The congressman from Minnesota has also argued that Biden is incapable of defeating Trump, whom Phillips has called an “aspiring dictator.” Asked by a reporter this week whether he believed Biden was a threat to democracy, Phillips answered, “Yes.”
This has outraged some Biden allies, who argue that the party must put all of its energy into stopping Trump. The dominant polling leader for the GOP nomination, Trump recently said he would not be a dictator “other than Day One” of a second term and has vowed to take revenge on critics and rivals if he is returned to office. Trump has sought to turn the tables on criticism he has received from experts, historians and political opponents by accusing Biden of being bad for democracy. The former president portrays himself without offering evidence as the victim of a political attack through the legal system as he faces four criminal indictments.
“President Biden is running against an actual real live threat to democracy,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who said she has heard from people in Minnesota who say they don’t recognize Phillips anymore. “A person who literally just said yesterday he would be a dictator on Day One. And Dean Phillips is saying the candidate for president — who he by the way voted with 100 percent of the time or thereabouts — is a threat to democracy? It sounds desperate.”
Biden’s campaign declined to comment on Phillips’s remarks about Biden and the primary system.
Phillips’s attacks this week are part of a broader escalation against Biden, as Phillips has increasingly spoken out against Biden’s handling of issues where he’s struggled with younger and liberal voters. In remarks arguing the necessity of a cease-fire in Gaza and the hypocrisy of continued marijuana criminalization, Phillips has sought to set himself apart, although he has consistently voted for Biden’s legislative agenda.
Even as Phillips keys in on widely held concerns in the party about Biden’s age and candidacy, he does not appear to be gaining ground as an alternative candidate in the state where he has placed much of the emphasis in his strategy, as the president retains a dominant position in the primary.
New Hampshire state Sen. David Watters (D), who is leading a write-in campaign for Biden, said voters with whom he has spoken are still engaged in the primary effort and are not convinced by Phillips’s argument that Biden has disenfranchised them.
“I don’t get it,” Watters said. “It’s almost like the kids in the schoolyard saying: ‘You’re ugly,’ ‘No, you’re ugly.’ ‘You’re a threat to democracy,’ ‘No you’re a threat to democracy.’”
In the run-up to launching his bid, Phillips encouraged moderate, well-known Democrats to challenge Biden, routinely criticizing the Democratic Party for what he saw as an uncompetitive primary that would hand the nomination to Biden without a real contest — despite broad appetite among voters for a younger alternative.
“Democrats are telling me that they want, not a coronation, but they want a competition,” Phillips said in an interview in August.
Over a month into his campaign, his rhetoric has hardened.
At a campaign house party in this southern New Hampshire town Tuesday night, Phillips praised the president’s record in office but attacked him over ballot access. He and other Democrats challenging Biden were not able to make it onto the Florida primary ballot after the state party chose only Biden for the ballot and Biden chose not to participate in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary on Jan. 23, an effort to play down its place in the revamped Democratic nominating process.
When he was asked by a reporter whether he believed Biden was a threat to democracy, Phillips elaborated on his affirmative answer.
“If he wasn’t, he would say something about what happened in Florida,” he continued. “He would do something about what happened in New Hampshire. How can you, the president of the United States, condemn the former president [Trump] who was clearly a dangerous man, and do what he did in New Hampshire and allow what’s happening in Florida?”
Supporters standing behind him with signs as he answered reporters’ questions cheered at some of his answers, but at the assertion that Biden was a threat to democracy, the small crowd remained mostly quiet.
The next day, Phillips said he had heard from the North Carolina Democratic Party, which told him it had not decided not to place him on the primary ballot. (The state party has not commented publicly on the matter.) Phillips said he is considering other methods to get his name onto the Democratic primary ballot in that state. He went on to suggest that the larger nominating apparatus is rigged.
“I want to know who is making this decision,” he said of the Florida and North Carolina state party choices. “Something is telling me it’s not just coming from the chairwoman or the chairperson of the parties in their respective states. I think there’s something else going on.”
Phillips was less hostile to the president early on in his campaign. When he launched his run, he told reporters that he thought Biden had saved the country.
“I’m here to celebrate the president,” Phillips said in October at the first news conference of his campaign. “I do not have anything but admiration for the president.”
A more combative approach
It’s unclear whether the recent turn to a more combative approach, which some strategists describe as ill-advised, could improve Phillips’s standing with Democratic voters. But some see his attacks as more ammunition for Republicans to call attention to Biden’s political weaknesses. “Dean should stop this bizarre sideshow,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Biden supporter.
Democratic strategists such as Joe Trippi, who in 2004 helped run Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s insurgent presidential campaign, had little sympathy for Phillips’s complaints.
“Yeah, I think it’s good for him to be reciting Trump’s talking points,” Trippi said, with clear sarcasm. “Donald Trump said something similar yesterday or the day before.”
Phillips kept up the attack on Biden on Wednesday at a North Conway campaign event, telling voters that he would respect the president if he encouraged an open primary.
“When you are almost certain to lose to the most dangerous person in the world and you continue to run, I think that’s damaging to democracy,” he said, referring to some recent polls in battleground states that show Trump leading Biden.
However, voters in New Hampshire did not appear to focus on Phillips’s comments when he was on the trail that day.
New Hampshire residents Betsy Hutchings and Evalyn Merrick, who voted for Biden in 2020 and said they will again in 2024 if he faces Trump, met Phillips while shopping on the main thoroughfare of North Conway and said they appreciated the conversation with him. But Merrick, a former state representative, later told The Washington Post that she was disappointed to learn Phillips had called Biden a threat to democracy.
“I want to believe we’re better than that,” Merrick said, “that we can do better than the Republicans, than the Trumpers because he badmouths his opponents and anybody he doesn’t believe.”
‘Keep our eyes on November 5th’
Phillips announced his run on the last possible day to file in New Hampshire, after previously calling on other Democrats with greater name recognition to run. The Minnesota lawmaker, who formerly managed Talenti Gelato and his family’s distillery company, is relatively unknown outside of his suburban Minneapolis congressional district.
Phillips has acknowledged on the campaign trail that he is likely to have torpedoed his political career, given the criticisms of his party that he has increasingly leveled. Meanwhile, his critics argue that he could do more to prevent Trump’s return to office if he supported Biden rather than running against him.
Ken Martin, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Minnesota, who had supported Phillips’s previous congressional runs since he flipped his district in 2018, dismissed Phillips’s complaints about not making it onto the ballot in Florida, saying it was an expression of Biden’s popularity.
“Our party is supporting our president — the vast majority of party leaders, activists and donors,” Martin said, adding that he thinks Phillips’s criticism of Biden and his campaign against the president are misguided. “I’ve never seen someone with so much political upside [throw] it away on a wild-goose chase.”
“If we want to talk about threats to democracy, we have to keep our eyes on November 5th of next year,” Martin said, referring to the general election.
Throughout his campaign events Wednesday, Phillips frequently attacked Biden. At a cannabis dispensary in Maine, he said Biden was on the “wrong side of history,” referring to Biden’s lack of action to legalize marijuana at the federal level. Earlier in the day, at a senior center, Phillips told voters that he believed Biden and Trump should hang their hats up and make way for a younger generation. Hours later, he called on Biden to do more to call for the release of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Several voters asked how he distinguished himself from Biden, and New Hampshire residents weighing whom to vote for about 50 days from now told The Post that they felt unsure Phillips had much of a chance of success.
Phillips also faced flak on the Israel-Gaza war: Toward the end of a town hall at Franklin Pierce University on Monday, an audience member spoke over Phillips as he was answering a question about Israel and said the congressman was not vocal enough about the loss of Palestinian lives. At the time that Phillips was touring the marijuana dispensary in Maine, protesters in his Minneapolis district who have previously held rallies to criticize the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza conflict tried to stage a sit-in in Phillips’s district office over his suggestion that a multinational peacekeeping force be deployed in Gaza.
Yet, Phillips drew the loudest applause lines from voters when he talked about the importance of defeating Trump.
“I think you will agree that reelecting Donald Trump would be an unmitigated disaster for our country, for democracy and particularly for our future,” Phillips said at a Monday college town hall event.
Trump, who has continued to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen from him, claimed recently in a speech in Iowa that Biden was “the destroyer of American democracy.” Meanwhile, Biden told donors Tuesday that if Trump wasn’t running, “I’m not sure I’d be running. We cannot let him win.”
One Biden ally suggested that Phillips was making that task harder.
“His assertion is laughable,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said. “The Gelato guy running for president is a total wet dream for Trump.”
Paybarah and LeVine reported from Washington.
