As a Minnesotan, seeing Dean Phillips repeatedly flirt with running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024 has been interesting to say the least. I would personally love to see a strong, younger, more centrist voice in the discussion on the left, and Phillips might be the right person to fill that role.
There are very few people of any persuasion who actually want to see a Biden vs. Trump rerun in 2024. Maybe that outcome can actually be avoided if we’re lucky…
So McCarthy is out for now, and Patrick McHenry is the temporary Speaker until they hold another election. The first ouster of a Speaker Of The House in U.S. history.
It will be very interesting to see where this lands in the end. It’s even possible that McCarthy could be re-elected Speaker depending on how things play out. It’s not clear who else would even be in the running to get enough votes to win the election.
Personally I’m disappointed McHenry got the nod, because one of the other people likely on McCarthy’s short list to be the temporary Speaker was a representative from Nebraska named…Adrian Smith!
Phillips is really a breath of fresh air, IMO. I think New Hampshire voters are going to eat this guy up once they see him speak a few times:
And the President’s decision to snub New Hampshire and try to invalidate its primary may have come back to haunt him:
Here’s hoping for some actual Democratic primary debates. If Phillips gets a meaningful win in New Hampshire and does well in polling, Biden may be forced to the debate stage.
Totally messed up that the Florida and North Carolina Democratic parties haven’t recognized Dean Phillips’ candidacy and have just tossed all their delegates to Biden without a primary. This actually violates the North Carolina party’s by-laws, so I think we can expect a legal challenge.
Kind of hard for Biden to bash Trump for skipping the primary debates when he’s pretending there aren’t any challengers on his side and is playing procedural games to box them out without a fair primary. If he can’t convince Democratic voters that he’s a better general election candidate than Phillips and Williamson, then he doesn’t deserve to be the nominee.
Although the Trumpless Republican debates get plenty of mainstream coverage, the same opportunities aren’t being presented for the Bidenless Democratic debates. Here are a couple that have had to go to more fringe outlets:
Jan. 8, Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson:
Jan. 13, Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson, and Cenk Uygur:
