If it looks to the rest of the world—or, at least, the small fraction of the population that’s even heard of him—like Rep. Dean Phillips rich-guy’d his way into Congress and now thinks he is going to save the Democratic Party with his extremely long-shot primary bid against President Joe Biden. The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta embarrassingly pours his heart into assuring the reader that this is not about ego or entitlement.
Alberta sets Phillips up as a saintly figure in the very first paragraph:
To spend time around Dean Phillips, as I have since his first campaign for Congress in 2018, is to encounter someone so earnest as to be utterly suspicious. He speaks constantly of joy and beauty and inspiration, beaming at the prospect of entertaining some new perspective. He allows himself to be interrupted often—by friends, family, staffers—but rarely interrupts them, listening patiently with a politeness that almost feels aggravating. With the practiced manners of one raised with great privilege—boasting a net worth he estimates at $50 million—the gentleman from Minnesota is exactly that.
You see, Phillips, a man of superlative honesty, is just so sad and frustrated that the Democratic establishment is not shouting from the rooftops that the president could very well lose reelection, that he has no choice but to run. He did not come to this decision lightly, we are assured. Rather, he stepped in as a last-ditch measure after all the prominent Democrats he tried to recruit refused.
That’s the overall gist of the story. We should stipulate that Phillips is merely the vehicle for the article’s real motivation: arguing that Biden is a terribly weak candidate and the Democratic Party as a whole has gravely erred in not forcing him to step aside. There’s no effort in this piece to consider any counterarguments. It doesn’t even seriously consider why other Democrats might not have challenged Biden.
That said, Alberta was clearly suckered by Phillips. He could have used Phillips to make his anti-Biden argument without going on nearly as much about what a stellar human being the earnest, polite, and gentlemanly congressman is. Instead, he comes across as a true believer—in Dean Phillips.
“Dems are freaking out, and for good reason,” Alberta tweeted to promote the article. “Dean Phillips may not be some heavyweight, but he’s got deep pockets and influential friends. In New Hampshire, Billy Shaheen—longtime kingmaker and husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen—is helping his campaign.”
Okay, first, has anyone seen signs of Democrats freaking out over Phillips? No, seriously, have I missed something big? Second, as Dana Houle suggested, Billy Shaheen’s time as a player in New Hampshire presidential politics arguably ended in 2007 when he had to step down as one of Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire co-chairs after he implied that then-Sen. Barack Obama had possibly been a drug dealer in his youth. Shaheen has not chaired a presidential campaign since.
And Alberta’s coverage of Phillips’ big bet on New Hampshire is hilarious.
The strategy, [campaign adviser Steve] Schmidt explained as we watched his candidate ad-lib for the roving cameras—shooting all manner of unscripted, stream-of-consciousness, turn-up-the-authenticity footage that would dovetail with the campaign’s policy of no polling or focus grouping—was to win New Hampshire outright. The president had made a massive tactical error, Schmidt said, by siding with the Democratic National Committee over New Hampshire in a procedural squabble that will leave the first-in-the-nation primary winner with zero delegates. Biden had declined to file his candidacy there, instead counting on loyal Democratic voters to write him onto the primary ballot. But now Phillips was preparing to spend the next three months blanketing the state, drawing an unflattering juxtaposition with the absentee president and maybe, just maybe, earning enough votes to defeat him. If that happens, Schmidt said, the media narrative will be what matters—not the delegate math. Americans would wake up to the news of two winners in the nation’s first primary elections: Trump on the Republican side, and Dean Phillips—wait, who?—yes, Dean Phillips on the Democratic side. The slingshot of coverage would be forceful enough to make Phillips competitive in South Carolina, then Michigan. By the time the campaign reached Super Tuesday, Schmidt said, Phillips would have worn the incumbent down—and won over the millions of Democrats who’ve been begging for an alternative.
Alberta acknowledges that this is “fanciful,” but goes on to explain why it just might work. Except that Shaheen’s involvement gets a “perhaps most consequentially” on the list of reasons. By contrast, the fact that Biden isn’t even on the ballot because New Hampshire is trying to jump the Democratic National Committee’s new order of primaries and the state is likely to be stripped of its convention delegates is buried in the middle of this 291-word paragraph. Phillips is going all in on a state where Biden intentionally isn’t on the ballot and the delegates are unlikely to count—and Alberta and his editors at The Atlantic are treating this ridiculous plan credulously.
This article is equally embarrassing both as a piece of profile writing and as political analysis. Remember, while Alberta might truly be that much of a Phillips fanboy, the reason his long-shot candidacy is getting this much attention in a major magazine is because of Biden. It’s about the media’s urge to juice the horse-race angle of any election that seems like a foregone conclusion.
Back in May, Amy Chozick absolutely humiliated herself with a New York Times profile of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, but she at least acknowledged that she might be getting played. Alberta never does.
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