Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) is taking his best shot at disrupting President Joe Biden‘s 2024 reelection campaign Tuesday in New Hampshire, but he also risks suffering a humiliating loss to someone who is not even on the ballot.
Because of a dispute between the Democratic National Committee and New Hampshire, Biden won’t appear on the ballot and he hasn’t campaigned in the state, while Phillips has staked his long-shot White House bid on the Granite State.
In the final hours before polls closed, Phillips asserted Biden needed to get 80% of the vote to show he’s not a “weak candidate” despite the president not even being a standard option for voters. By raising the bar for Biden, Phillips seems to be drastically lowering expectations for himself, after raising at least $1 million and campaigning across the state to beat a nascent write-in campaign.
Democratic strategist Kaivan Shroff says New Hampshire isn’t going to throw off Biden from his 2024 planned campaign launch in South Carolina next month. Biden’s best-case scenario would be crushing Phillips “without being on this ballot.”
“That would immediately shut down Phillips,” he said.
But Biden would still fare well even if he “wins by slightly lower margins than predicted,” Shroff explained. “The story works in his favor — a president so popular that he won a rare write-in campaign despite not even being on the ballot or competing in the state!”
Shroff even predicted the write-in win “will drive positive coverage for Biden as he heads into primaries that actually count, where he will absolutely dominate (like SC).”
But even in the worst case, he predicted, “Phillips does better than expected and gets another two weeks of coverage.” This wouldn’t be a significant problem for Biden, though, since Phillips “has nowhere to go from New Hampshire.”
Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin went as far as to say the 2024 New Hampshire Democratic primary is “meaningless.”
“Biden isn’t on the ballot, hasn’t campaigned in the state, and it doesn’t even count for delegates,” he pointed out. “Biden is focused on the general election as he should be.”
Incumbent presidents are typically expected not only to win their party’s nomination, but to do so by a significant margin. However, with New Hampshire relying on a write-in effort, Biden might not see such a blowout win.
Phillips has managed to rack up 16% support among New Hampshire Democratic voters. Although, 61% still plan to write Biden in.
Executive Director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball noted that Phillips does better among younger voters than older.
“The key challenge for Biden is to prevent a significant youth turnout in New Hampshire,” Kimball said. A large youth presence in the New Hampshire contest would potentially give his long-shot opponent “a coalition to leverage in other states.”
Despite these circumstances, Republican New Hampshire strategist Matthew Bartlett explained that the state’s Democratic Party “has done a very good job” encouraging voters to write Biden in. He further said Phillips never truly “caught fire” in the Granite State.
“I think there is more of an impetus to support the president than the challenger,” he said. As for Democrats upset with Biden not filing in the state, Bartlett predicted they will probably stay home rather than vote against him.
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Democratic strategist Max Burns suggested Phillips isn’t expecting to continue in the Democratic race after New Hampshire, but rather “hoping to position himself as a candidate on the Republican-financed No Labels ticket later this year.”
Phillips has gone back and forth in the last couple of days on potentially joining No Labels in their centrist presidential bid, which they have yet to say whether they will be nominating a candidate for. After suggesting he would consider joining the ticket in a former President Donald Trump and Biden rematch, which polls suggest Biden would lose, Phillips walked his comments back Monday, saying he “cannot imagine” joining a No Labels third-party run.
