One-time Biden challenger Dean Phillips weighs in on the election results

Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips has issued a postmortem of his party following its defeat in the 2024 election.

While pollsters had long predicted a close vice-presidential battle Kamala Harris and she Republican rival, Donald Trumpthe latter emerged as the clear winner. The two competed to replace the incumbent president Joe Bidenagainst whom Phillips faced during the 2024 Democratic presidential primary.

Appears on Fox and friends On Thursday morning, the Minnesota congressman said, “This entire election, in my opinion, was sealed the day Joe Biden announced he was running for re-election.”

“We should have had a game,” Phillips said. “It makes everything better. Better value products, better political candidates.”

“It’s difficult to build a presidential campaign in a few weeks, as I tried to do,” Phillips added, referring to his challenge to Biden’s entrenchment.

“That’s when we made a mistake,” he said. “And we made another mistake by not holding a competitive, open primary that the president of the United States would have promoted and not suppressed.”

Newsweek contacted Phillips, the White House, the Democratic National Committeeand Sanders for comment via email.

Harris received the party’s nomination after Biden’s withdrawal from the race in July. Shortly afterwards, Democrats threw their support behind Harris.

Biden’s departure came shortly after a disastrous presidential debate against Trump.

Phillips said his party must do more to listen to voters’ concerns.

“Bernie Sanders hit him in the head,” Phillips said. “We’ve lost touch with the core of America.”

It wasn’t clear exactly what Phillips was referring to, but Sanders, a Vermont independent who works with the Democratic Party, scathing comments made about the state of the party after its defeat.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party that has failed the working class finds that the working class has failed them,” Sanders wrote. He also criticized the Democratic leadership for defending “the status quo” while Americans are “angry and want change.”

Phillips added that the candidates who can recognize that and are authentic will win. He said that in his eyes the US was “a centre-right country”.

This means that every progressive party must “work harder, listen harder, extend invitations, and listen more to people who see things differently,” the congressman said.

“There’s an interesting divide right now between cultural America and political America. Donald Trump has tapped into something that I honestly don’t know if there is any candidate who could have defeated him this year.

“But with a match we certainly did a lot better.”

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