Democrats owe Dean Phillips a GIANT apology 🙏

PLUS: A "wow" poll on AOC and Chuck Schumer 😮

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(Dean Phillips/ Getty Images/ Timothy A. Clary)

1. Dean was right

When Dean Phillips started to sound the alarm about the risk Democrats were taking in lining up behind President Joe Biden in 2024, he was ignored.

When the Minnesota Democratic Congressman announced his long-shot candidacy to take on Biden, he was pilloried.

South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a prominent supporter of the president’s, seems to suggest that Phillips’ candidacy was aimed at ignoring or marginalizing the black voters who had delivered the nomination to Biden.

Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper said that he didn’t see the point of Phillips’ candidacy. “I’m not sure I agree with trying to call further attention to the things the public has issues with,” he said.

Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the head of the House Progressive Caucus, told NBC of Phillips: “I'm sorry, I have no idea what he's running on that's different from what President Biden is running on.”

It was a remarkably coordinated effort to denigrate and destroy Phillips for making a point that lots and lots of Democrats agreed with: Joe Biden was too old to run for another term.

I was thinking about Phillips over the weekend after reading a piece he wrote in

The Free Press

about his experience becoming a party pariah for being, well, right.

These paragraphs in particular really struck me:

I announced that I was running for president on October 27, 2023. Almost immediately, the party mechanism was activated, and I became persona non grata. The media, in particular MSNBC, where former Biden staffers wielded positions of influence—essentially deplatformed me and those supporting me. Party activists, paid and volunteer, took to social media to attack and discredit me.

The Democratic National Committee announced proactively that there would be no debates. State Democratic parties took steps to keep anyone not named “Biden” from being on the ballot, forcing us to file several lawsuits. In Florida, state Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried moved immediately to prevent my name from appearing on the primary ballot—literally disenfranchising millions of Florida voters by denying them the opportunity to even participate in a primary.

This wasn’t a fight for democracy, rather a coordinated fight against democracy—executed by a private corporation with no accountability to voters.

For a party ostensibly focused on protecting democracy and expanding voter rights and access, denying Democratic primary voters a single alternative to Biden was nothing short of rank hypocrisy.

Here’s the truth: Not only does every Democratic elected official owe Dean Phillips an apology but the fact that he hasn’t gotten many (any?) speaks to the fact that the party still doesn’t get how much damage it did to its brand with the Biden age/health cover-up.

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