With Biden out, Dean Phillips still wants more presidential competition for Democrats

Dean Phillips, the suburban Minnesota congressman who ran a long-shot Democratic primary campaign against President Joe Biden this year, said Monday he isn’t looking for anyone to tell him he was right after Biden dropped out of the race in response to concerns Phillips tried to raise for months.

“I’m grateful we broke the delusion,” Phillips said in an interview. “I’m not looking for vindication or I told-you-sos or apologies.”

Phillips is not running for a fourth term representing his western Hennepin County congressional district. He has been publicly praising Vice President Kamala Harris, who is quickly consolidating prominent Democrats, including Minnesota’s U.S. senators and its three other Democratic U.S. House members.

But Phillips is stopping short of a full endorsement, saying instead that he is still looking for a political system that challenges incumbents. Instead, he explained, he wants to see Harris and three other candidates — perhaps selected via a straw poll of the 4,000 delegates to the Democratic National Convention ― hold four town halls around the country. Delegates would choose their candidates after all those town halls.

He said he thinks such a process would sharpen Harris and could help vet potential vice presidents.

Phillips said he is not interested in being vice president or renewing his presidential campaign, but that he thinks Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Roy Cooper of North Carolina would all be good contenders.

Phillips ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Biden after getting little traction in the Super Tuesday contests in early March. He finished third in Minnesota after Biden and “uncommitted.”

Phillips had said he wanted someone to run against Biden and only did it himself when no one would challenge the president. But voters did not respond.

The presidential debate last month that led to cascading calls for Biden to step down was no surprise to Phillips. He felt Biden had lost a few steps since 2020, he said, and he ran for president himself because no one else seemed to see what he did.

Though Phillips endorsed Biden when he suspended his own presidential run in March, his doubts remained.

His overarching desire all along has been to best position a Democratic candidate who can beat former President Donald Trump, Phillips said. It was the same impulse that led him to run for Congress the first time in 2018.

“It’s important that voters be provided alternatives,” Phillips said. He said he thought incumbents should get primary challengers more often, especially “when there is an obvious weakness and obvious decline, visible to anybody paying attention.”

Phillips said he thinks Biden’s team kept him too insulated, so the debate was shocking.

“I think it’s worthy of a conversation why everybody was so surprised,” Phillips said.

The Democratic National Committee is still firming up the way the party will nominate a candidate, if anyone other than Harris makes a move.

Phillips said he is excited about the prospect of an eventual Harris candidacy.

All he wanted out of his own campaign, Phillips said, was for people to feel like there were options, and to give people a reason to be excited about the election.

Harris “is well positioned to re-energize base Democrats, energize young voters,” Phillips said, “and put the coalition back together.”