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brooklynite

(95,550 posts)
Fri Oct 27, 2023, 11:35 AM Oct 2023

The Atlantic: Dean Phillips is Primarying Joe Biden

To spend time around Dean Phillips, as I have since his first campaign for Congress in 2018, is to encounter someone so earnest as to be utterly suspicious. He speaks constantly of joy and beauty and inspiration, beaming at the prospect of entertaining some new perspective. He allows himself to be interrupted often—by friends, family, staffers—but rarely interrupts them, listening patiently with a politeness that almost feels aggravating. With the practiced manners of one raised with great privilege—boasting a net worth he estimates at $50 million—the gentleman from Minnesota is exactly that.

But that courtly disposition cracks, I’ve noticed, when he’s convinced that someone is lying. Maybe it’s because at six months old he lost his father in a helicopter crash that his family believes the military covered up, in a war in Vietnam that was sold to the public with tricks and subterfuge. I can hear the anger in his voice as he talks about the treachery that led to January 6, recalling his frantic search for some sort of weapon—he found only a sharpened pencil—with which to defend himself against the violent masses who were sacking the U.S. Capitol. I can see it in his eyes when Phillips, who is Jewish, remarks that some of his Democratic colleagues have recently spread falsehoods about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and others in the party have refused to condemn blatant anti-Semitism.

Deception is a part of politics. Phillips acknowledges that. But some deceptions are more insidious than others. On the third Saturday of October, as we sat inside the small, sun-drenched living room of his rural-Virginia farmhouse, Phillips told me he was about to do something out of character: He was going to upset some people. He was going to upset some people because he was going to run for president. And he was going to run for president, Phillips explained, because there is one deception he can no longer perpetuate.

“My grave concern,” the congressman said, “is I just don’t think President Biden will beat Donald Trump next November.”

This isn’t some fringe viewpoint within the Democratic Party. In a year’s worth of conversations with other party leaders, Phillips told me, “everybody, without exception,” shares his fear about Joe Biden’s fragility—political and otherwise—as he seeks a second term. This might be hyperbole, but not by much: In my own recent conversations with party officials, it was hard to find anyone who wasn’t jittery about Biden. Phillips’s problem is that they refuse to say so on the record. Democrats claim to view Trump as a singular threat to the republic, the congressman complains, but for reasons of protocol and self-preservation they have been unwilling to go public with their concerns about Biden, making it all the more likely, in Phillips’s view, that the former president will return to office.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/10/dean-phillips-joe-biden-2024-primary/675784/
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The Atlantic: Dean Phillips is Primarying Joe Biden (Original Post) brooklynite Oct 2023 OP
He fears president Biden won't beat tfg...which is nonsense, but thinks the best way to insure tfg PortTack Oct 2023 #1
I just gave his office a call and WhiteTara Oct 2023 #2
Is he going to forego re-election in the House? W_HAMILTON Oct 2023 #3
of course. Let's waste time and money WhiteTara Oct 2023 #4
another post on this? bigtree Oct 2023 #5
Who? mcar Oct 2023 #6

PortTack

(32,938 posts)
1. He fears president Biden won't beat tfg...which is nonsense, but thinks the best way to insure tfg
Fri Oct 27, 2023, 12:04 PM
Oct 2023

Doesn’t return to office is to weaken president Biden’s support. Good gawd!

WhiteTara

(29,784 posts)
2. I just gave his office a call and
Fri Oct 27, 2023, 12:20 PM
Oct 2023

literally laughed "in his face" in my message and suggested that he take care of the people in Minnetonka MN.

I suggest he receive many many many calls just like that.
+1 952 656 5176

W_HAMILTON

(7,921 posts)
3. Is he going to forego re-election in the House?
Fri Oct 27, 2023, 12:24 PM
Oct 2023

If not, we should wholeheartedly support a primary challenger. That would be a quick way to see how popular Biden actually is. I'd gladly send financial support to another Democrat that actually supports our incumbent president and all the great things he has accomplished on behalf of the American people.

bigtree

(86,283 posts)
5. another post on this?
Fri Oct 27, 2023, 02:15 PM
Oct 2023

...this one pushing the laughable claim that there's a 'deception' about Pres. Biden's age.

What a sham of a presentation from this writer, casting Biden's age as some kind of arrogance from the president, supposing, I guess, that he's aging in office just to spite us.

"I warned him!" Dean exclaimed.

He needs to fuck off.

There's no special qualification in being younger than Biden, and this upstart, privileged nobody hearing voices in his head telling him to challenge this historically successful Democratic president and encouraging even more challengers is a political idiot, and intends to be a deliberate obstacle to the president's re-election.

He wants your support for this idiocy.

I'm sure someone, somewhere else has managed to fit even more bullshit into an article about another rich white guy who wants to save us from ourselves? But, I doubt it.



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