Pages

Sunday, November 26, 2023

Dean Phillips and pass-the-torch. And the man in video. And while unlikely to move events to change a Biden-Trump rematch, hearing Phillips out is something he deserves. As in Keep an Open Mind, eh?

Pass the torch - if you ask for it, you do it

Video. Town Hall. Strolling interview. Doing humor.

Why is he doing it? What does he expect? What should we expect?

Can we answer that from outside, looking at him, and is the question really, were he to win, what would we be getting? Always starting from that and working back seems wise.

His style differs from Trump, full constant bluster and bullshit, and from Biden, always seeming calculating, as if knowing how power can be used, and "Aw, schucks" presented to disarm a show of cold calculation, along with gaffs that don't hurt the campaign.

He seems a quick-response direct person. Bright. With success in business in his background, not like Trump's bankruptcies and making a small fortune by starting with inheriting a large one; not a career politician, which Biden exemplifies.

It seems good if he is heard. An early November Reuters report:

Nov 2 (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Dean Phillips on Thursday told Reuters that he is loaning his campaign about $2 million to fund his long-shot bid to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and said he was attending fundraisers in major cities.

Seizing on the 80-year-old Biden's lackluster approval ratings and voter wariness over his age, the millionaire businessman and gelato company co-founder announced his bid last week.

"I seeded my campaign with capital because I had to," Phillips, 54, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an event at Manny's, a meeting space in San Francisco. "I wouldn't say it's the max, but that's my intentional max."

Phillips, a three-term congressman from a swing district in Minnesota, said he would not take money from lobbyists and would not seek outside fundraising groups working on his behalf, vowing to focus instead on smaller contributors. "I think money in politics is awfully destructive," he said, citing, among other things, the time politicians spend listening to donor concerns over the concerns of average voters.

Still, Phillips acknowledged he would be attending fundraisers with big-dollar individual donors who can give a maximum of $3,300 in the presidential primary fight.

"I will be in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I'll be going to New York and Chicago, and Miami and larger cities to raise resources and campaign," Phillips said.

Biden's 2024 re-election team and his party in October said they had raised $71 million during the third quarter.

[...] Phillips is unlikely to affect Biden's chance of securing the party's nomination, given Biden's deep resources, official party support and the reshaping of the Democratic party's nominating contest calendar to help fend off any early challengers.

[...] "I think Joe Biden is a good man but he's been doing this for 50 years," Phillips told a crowd of several dozen in San Francisco. "He is probably one of the only Democrats who could lose to Donald Trump. And frankly, the truth is, he probably will."

In 2020 the Biden cramdown was premised on media repeating, "Biden is the one who can beat Trump," when Biden himself admitted that at that point anybody could, and with Bernie's challenge being the target of "Biden's the one" propaganda.

Now, Phillips quite reasonably, says Biden might likely lose to Trump. Crabgrass views that as astounding, given Trump, but the electorate moves in mysterious ways. The Crabgrass view is Biden has done better than Crabgrass ever expected, Manchin doing a large part of the foot-dragging dirty work, but well enough to have and deserve a second term - be it against Trump as slam-dunk obvious, or against Nikki Haley or whoever the opposition could advance aside from Trump.

Crabgrass understands the "slam-dunk" thought is not as widely shared as might be best, but you believe what you want to, etc.