As noted in yesterday’s Morning Jolt, we ought to give Dean Phillips some credit; when you’re a little-known Minnesota congressman taking on an incumbent president, getting almost 20 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary isn’t too shabby – even if Joe Biden didn’t campaign and his name wasn’t on the ballot because New Hampshire was violating DNC rules by holding their primary too early. Phillips still got more than 23,000 people to cast a ballot for him in the Democratic primary.
Unfortunately for Phillips, the Democrats won’t allocate any delegates to the convention on based on Tuesday night’s results. This is what happens when the Democratic National Committee challenger-proofs the presidential-primary schedule.
And for Phillips… nothing gets any easier from here. The first contest that will allocate delegates will be in South Carolina, where the most recent Emerson poll puts Biden at 69 percent and Phillips at 5 percent.
Under the South Carolina Democratic party’s rules, to receive a delegate to the convention, Phillips will have to win at least 15 percent of the vote, or win a congressional district.
Then it’s on to Nevada, where a separate Emerson survey of that state’s likely Democratic primary voters found Biden at almost 78 percent, Phillips at nine-tenths of one percent, and Marianne Williamson at 2.4 percent. Then it’s on to Michigan, where the MIRS/Northern Michigan Business Alliance/Target Insyght survey of 600 likely Democratic primary voters conducted earlier this month put Biden at 73 percent, Williamson at 9 percent, Dean Phillips 3 percent, and 16 percent undecided.
And then it’s on to Super Tuesday, with 15 states voting.
Every potential primary challenger to an incumbent president faces a steep climb, but the DNC made sure that the 2024 Democratic cycle’s schedule maximized Biden’s chances for a quick, easy win. There just wasn’t enough runway for any Democratic challenger — even a better-known, more popular governor – to gain traction against Biden, even with his weaknesses.