Having Dean Phillips in the Democratic Race Will Be Good for Joe Biden

This week, Joe Biden’s presidential reelection campaign got two bits of news. One was unwelcome and worrying, and the other might not be as bad as it first seems.

According to a new HarrisX/The Messenger poll, dated Oct. 23, in a head-to-head match-up, President Biden has fallen behind former president Donald Trump, 41% to 45%, among registered voters. If you add Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, who are running as independents, Biden falls to 38% (and Trump to 40%, which is still ahead). 

At this point, one has to ask: How could Biden lose to Trump? One poll does not an election make, but this recent poll joins some others that point to weakness in Biden’s reelection hopes. Trump has spent the past few months fighting off indictments, explaining gaffes about Hamas and Israel, and generally having a not-very-good time of things. Biden, meanwhile, has been doing … OK? He gave a well-received speech about Israel and generally seems to stay out of trouble, to the point of being boring (save for the pesky Hunter Biden Story That Will Not Go Away). 

So, why is Biden doing so poorly in polling? Part of that can be answered with the other bit of news this week: the emergence of a serious challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota congressman, will challenge Biden’s bid for the Democratic nomination in upcoming primaries. Phillips is relatively unknown but, unlike earlier challengers such as Kennedy, before his switch to independent, or Marianne Williamson, who ran unsuccessfully in 2020, Phillips represents a mainstream Democratic point of view politically. He represents a viable alternative to Biden, one that many in the party might be okay with. 

Here, we should take a moment to check our expectations just a bit. Presidents seeking reelection are almost always renominated by their party. In fact, only one sitting president, Franklin Pierce, was not nominated for a second term, and that was in 1852 (his pro-South stance was not popular with the Northern wing of the Democratic Party in those pre-Civil War days). Sitting presidents simply have too much going for them — wide party support, a “bully pulpit” from which to capture media attention, and a track record on which to run. Phillips does not have just an uphill climb; he has a Sisyphean task. 

But Biden’s weak polling numbers reveal his own uphill climb to a second term. Phillips offers at least one thing that Biden does not have: Phillips is 54, and Biden already is the oldest serving president and would go into a second term, should he win, as the oldest serving president at age 82. 

At the same time, polling also shows widespread support, at least among Democrats, for Biden over Trump. So, we are back to the question of why Biden cannot seem to pull ahead of Trump. 

One reason is that Biden simply has not been campaigning much, if at all. And why should he? He has been running against a weak to nonexistent Democratic field in the nomination process. There is little incentive for him to run hard at this point.

This is where Phillips’ entry to the race could, believe it or not, help Biden. It might be the kick in the rear that Ol’ Joe needs to actually start getting out in front of the American people and campaigning. Trump has never been shy about his own non-stop campaigning (it seems to sustain him) and, as a result, people know him, or at least think they do. Biden, despite being an okay president, is less known. Having to campaign in the primaries would get Biden out in front of the voters again and may help him, in the long run, win over more of the American public.

We’ll have to see how it all turns out, but I suspect that, in the end, Joe Biden should thank Dean Phillips for running against him. 

David Richards, Ph.D., is associate professor, International Relations & Security Studies, and chair of the Political Science program and International Relations & Security Studies program in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Lynchburg.