Ex-Biden challenger outgoing Rep. Dean Phillips bluntly tore into his party as “rudderless” and “devoid of leadership” in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 victory.
Phillips (D-Minn.), 55, argued that Democrats need to roll up their sleeves and do more listening, especially to the voters who have ditched the party over recent cycles.
“A party that consists of multiple silos and campaign committees and outside groups cannot strategically do its job, and that means leadership,” Phillips bluntly told Politico.
“Right now, we are totally devoid of leadership. We are rudderless.”
The North Star State Democrat mused that he’s not even sure whom his colleagues would cite as the party’s leader, and underscored the need to fix the leadership vacuum in order for the party to roar back to power in Washington.
“I think it’s ironic that the Republican Party is now representing America’s working class. It’s astounding, and that was ceded to them by people that have prioritized things like tenure over talent, identity politics over pragmatic problem solving,” Philips bemoaned.
Phillips is far from alone in railing against his party’s emphasis on seniority. Fellow Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) knocked the party for selecting Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to serve as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.
“Within the Democratic Caucus, we are really stuck in our old ways of doing things, which is you get there by seniority,” Crockett told MSNC Saturday. “I don’t think we fully sit there and say, ‘Who may be best equipped for this moment?’”
Looming large among House Democrats is former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who ceded the No. 1 Dem spot to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the start of last year.
Although no longer technically in charge of House Democrats, the 84-year-old pol is widely believed to retain enormous influence within her party.
She was believed to have played a powerbroker role of sorts during the mutiny against President Biden over the summer in the wake of his fumbling debate performance. Pelosi also helped whip up support for Connolly over Ocasio-Cortez.
“I admire to this very day Nancy Pelosi, but I even then said we need change,” Phillips reflected to Politico, in reference to his early days in the House.
“I threw my support behind Hakeem Jeffries literally the first few days I was here as a newly elected member of Congress, and vowed to support him,” he added. “To now see this bubbling of generational change is really gratifying and long, long overdue.”
Phillips, who surfed the “blue wave” and was first elected to the lower chamber in 2018, had begun rising the leadership ranks to serve as co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.
Then in late 2023, he bucked his party’s brass and mounted a longshot primary challenge against Biden, premised on concerns about the 82-year-old president’s age and vitality.
Initially, Phillips took tremendous flack from his party but in the wake of Biden dropping out of the race in July and then Vice President Kamala Harris losing on Nov. 5,
“That’s exactly why I did it. It’s the absence of the willingness to acknowledge reality. We have put Americans in this position where they have to wonder if what they’re seeing is real, because members of Congress won’t even validate it,” Phillips said.
“If what I feel now is vindication, it’s awfully unsatisfying. I felt vindicated the day I announced my campaign, because I knew this was not an opinion. This was a fact. The fact was, he was not in a position to win.”
Biden, who would’ve been 86 years old at the conclusion of a second hypothetical term, has told some of his allies that he believes he could’ve bested President-elect Donald Trump if he stayed in the race
Phillips has not ruled out a potential return to politics somewhere down the line, though he caveated that right now he has no plans to do so.
