Presidential hopeful Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) pushed back on an MSNBC panel led by Symone Sanders Townsend — former chief spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris — as they attempted to grill him on the heels of his decisive loss in the South Carolina Democratic primary.
Sanders, who worked on Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2016 presidential campaign, began by pointing to the numbers — Phillips took third place behind President Joe Biden and fellow Democratic challenger Marianne Williamson — and asked Phillips to explain how he could possibly hope to win a general election when he could not win the Democratic primary.
WATCH:
Grateful for the invitation from @SymoneDSanders and MSNBC to discuss why Democrats must use invitation – not condemnation – and promote a new generation of common sense leaders like @GovWhitmer and @RepJeffries.
We will not succeed by coronating leaders of the past when… pic.twitter.com/4Fbavkqwyw
— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) February 4, 2024
Phillips pointed to the fact that his name recognition nationally was practically non-existent — something he attributed to the fact that the Democratic Party appeared to be more interested in simply coronating Joe Biden than in encouraging healthy debate and competition.
“I think I probably have 5% name recognition now in the country. No voters know me,” Phillips said. “In fact, this is my first invitation to your network in four months. So I’m grateful to all of you — sincerely, I mean that.”
“That’s my whole point,” he continued. “The GOP has had a competition. They’re on TV, they’re consuming hundreds of hours of primetime television, debates, town halls. CNN has given every GOP candidate a one-hour town hall. At least there’s energy on the GOP side. We don’t get energy unless there’s competition. So when you coronate someone — especially a man like Joe Biden …”
Phillips went on to explain that he respected Biden but that his goal was to encourage more competition — a move that he said would ultimately help Democrats to put forth the best and strongest candidates.
Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele weighed in next: “So the Chairman in me says, ‘What the hell you doing?'”
Steele went on to argue that the Democratic Party had had a chance to choose someone different in 2020 — and they had chosen Biden. He argued that the fact that Biden was not stepping down — which Phillips said was a “big mistake” — meant that the primary was his to lose.