Dean Phillips’ 2024 campaign to challenge Joe Biden just got messier

Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., has a clear reason for challenging President Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primaries: “It is time for a change,” he has said. But it’s not clear if Phillips knows exactly what that change would look like. If his embarrassing deference to folks like hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and X owner Elon Musk is any sign of what’s to come, it seems that the presidency he envisions will be dictated by reactionary billionaires.

Ever since kicking off his campaign in October, Phillips has struggled for both supporters and funders. At one campaign event in New Hampshire last Tuesday, not a single voter showed up. (“Sometimes if you build it, they don’t come,” he joked.) Then, over the weekend, Ackman announced that he was donating $1 million to the super PAC supporting Phillips’ White House bid. It was “by far the largest investment I have ever made in someone running for office,” declared Ackman, the son of real estate titan Lawrence Ackman.

But there was a problem: Ackman recently developed a large right-wing fan base by attacking diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — the same initiatives that Phillips was promoting on his campaign website. Rather than acknowledge that he might have some differences of opinion with a candidate he generally liked, Ackman responded to online criticism with the imperious tone of someone who owned a candidate — he claimed Phillips “didn’t understand what DEI was when that was made part of his website” and insisted that his beneficiary was “getting educated as we speak.” Hours after he started arguing that Phillips had erred, according to Politico, Phillips scrubbed the reference to DEI from his website. The language “diversity, equity and inclusion” was replaced with “equity and restorative justice.”

The Phillips campaign spokesperson (absurdly) claimed that the change was not due to pressure from Ackman: “DEI now means such divergent things to different people that it is no longer descriptive,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement to Politico. “Instead of an academic discussion of a phrase our campaign prefers to focus on the urgent need to address and redress racial disparities — the policy substance of which remains completely unchanged on our site.”

It’s true that the policy language under the new heading is the same. Still, the breakneck speed with which Phillips tried to cater to Ackman’s demands is undignified and concerning. Why is someone running for the Democratic ticket focused on mollifying plutocrats who want to wage war on even the most anodyne kinds of diversity and inclusion programs? Even though he only changed the header language, Phillips seems concerned about playing an optics game with a crowd that shouldn’t be accommodated, but repudiated.

There are other signs that Phillips is inclined to get cozy with the ultra-wealthy. In an online conversation on X, he floated Ackman, Musk and angel investor Jason Calacanis as potential members of his future presidential Cabinet. In that conversation he also used the kind of libertarian cost-cutting language that business moguls love by proposing hiring a consulting firm to conduct a “top-down assessment” of the government. This is all unsavory pandering coming from a rank-and-file Democrat who previously has aligned with Biden on most policies, and should view this scene as hostile to working-class interests.

The deeper issue seems to be that Phillips is sloppily casting about for a new political identity in a bid to get any traction against Biden. In December, he adopted the left-wing “Medicare for All” policy as part of his platform, yet also issued the caveat that he disagreed with several of its key provisions, including outlawing most private health insurance. That was a striking development coming from a centrist Democrat who sits on the moderate Problem Solver caucus. The timing was also noteworthy: It came about two months after he announced his presidential run, suggesting he was newly angling to sweep up progressive Dems who may be disenchanted with Biden. Such opportunistic ad hoc maneuvering isn’t likely to garner the trust of progressives who are looking for the next Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Phillips appears to be flailing about in an ill-fated attempt to challenge Biden. If he had a clear and compelling vision for the White House, he might remain a long shot, but he’d at least have a chance at advancing some important ideas and he could speak with credibility on the issue of potentially being more “electable” than Biden. Instead, right now it looks more like he’s searching for a reason to justify being in the race at all.