When Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips started to sound the alarm about the risk Democrats were taking in lining up behind President Joe Biden in 2024, he was ignored. And when he announced his long-shot candidacy to take on Biden, he was pilloried.
There was a remarkably coordinated effort to denigrate and destroy Phillips for making a point that lots and lots of Democrats agreed with: Joe Biden was too old to run for another term.
Over the weekend, Phillips wrote in The Free Press about his experience becoming a party pariah for being, well, right. Here’s a particular salient section of the piece:
“This wasn’t a fight for democracy, rather a coordinated fight against democracy—executed by a private corporation with no accountability to voters. For a party ostensibly focused on protecting democracy and expanding voter rights and access, denying Democratic primary voters a single alternative to Biden was nothing short of rank hypocrisy.”
Here’s the truth: Not only does every Democratic elected official owe Dean Phillips an apology, but the fact that he hasn’t gotten many (any?) speaks to the fact that the party still doesn’t get how much damage it did to its brand with the Biden cover-up.
The simple fact, as we now know, is that Phillips was far from the only Democratic official, Cabinet member or White House staffer who had been aware of Biden episodes that left them very concerned about the president’s ability to serve a second term (or even finish out his first).
We also now know that there was a purposeful effort to protect Biden and keep the reality of his declining mental and physical health from the public. And whether wittingly or unwittingly, the silence of so many Democrats about what they had seen with their own eyes in regards to Biden’s condition helped to aid and abet the cover-up.
As Phillips rightly noted:
“The Democratic Party can still redeem itself. But the first step is for everyone that was aware of Biden’s condition to come clean. No more evasions. No more insistence that he was sharp when you met him. The whole truth will come out, and they would be wise to get ahead of it. ”
No major political party in this country is irredeemable. But, Democrats—or at least lots of Democrats—seem to think that memory-holing their silence on Biden’s decline in 2024 (and 2023 and 2022) will make it go away.
I disagree.
I think one of the major reasons that the Democratic brand is in historically bad shape with the American public is because people do not trust it anymore. That lack of trust is rooted in the fact that Democrats knew that Biden wasn’t up to the job anymore and not only went along with the idea that he was doing great but also personally attacked anyone like Phillips who was raising in public the very same questions they were raising in private.
There’s a cowardice in that—being afraid to say what you actually think for fear of stepping out of line. (And, yes, I am aware that sentence describes a whole lot of Republicans in regards to Donald Trump too.)
I know Democrats don’t want to “re-litigate” what happened last year. Old news, they shout at me. Trump is 1000 times worse, they type in ALL CAPS. But unless and until the party grapples with how much damage was done by its failure to speak out about what was right in front of its face, I am doubtful it can truly begin to recover or move forward.
Want more ball and strike calling—no matter what uniform the batter at the plate is wearing? Check out Chris Cillizza’s Substack and YouTube channel.
The post Opinion: Why Democrats Owe Dean Phillips a Giant Apology appeared first on The Daily Beast.
