Would-be 2024 Democratic primary challengers to President Joe Biden fade away

Rep. Dean Phillips’s (D-MN) fall campaign schedule includes appearances at the Osseo Lions Parade and the Anoka Halloween Pre-Parade Walk, both in the western Minneapolis suburbs of Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District. Worthy events, to be sure, but a long way off from the early-voting presidential primary states of New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.

Phillips, elected to the House in 2018, was for a few weeks in early summer the most prominent potential 2024 Democratic rival to President Joe Biden. Phillips, on national talk shows, raised concerns that Biden, who at 78 became the nation’s oldest president, could be vulnerable on the age issue in a likely 2024 rematch against his vanquished 2020 Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.

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But Phillips, 54, has of late gone quiet, symbolizing a fast-fading Democratic primary field against Biden — to the degree one ever existed.

At one point, it looked conceivable that Biden could face a Democratic primary challenge from a liberal stalwart, like 55-year-old Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), a television-ready media star who started his own PAC to target red states and go “on the road to take the fight to states where freedom is most under attack.”

Or 58-year-old Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), a billionaire who could have easily sunk tens of millions of dollars into a presidential campaign without blinking. Longer-shot mentions include a pair of neighboring Democratic governors first elected in 2022, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, 50, and Maryland’s Wes Moore, 44.

The Biden White House, and the president’s outside political operation, though, have largely beaten back serious Democratic primary concerns, even as polls show voters worry about Biden’s age and energy and prominent commentators have ruminated on whether he should drop out of the presidential race. Also, House Republicans moved ahead with an impeachment inquiry, and the Justice Department indicted the president’s son, Hunter, on gun charges.

Team Biden’s tactics included creating an advisory board to bring the would-be challengers onside. It also built teams of campaign surrogates that span the country touting Biden’s record — and denying top-tier staffers to potential Democratic primary rivals.

“I think there probably is an element of boxing out and trying to give people something, or they feel like their national ambitions are in some way being satisfied,” Liz Mair, a GOP political strategist, told the Washington Examiner. “So, yeah, part of me thinks that is kind of sidelining people, trying to take them off the board.”

Jamie E. Wright, a California lawyer and political analyst, told the Washington Examiner she thought Biden adding Newsom to his board was a strategic move that could vault the California governor to a higher stage in the future if he chooses to highlight the correct issues.

“It now, warily, puts him on a national platform and gives him a certain amount of credence and acknowledgment by the Biden supporters by him being a part of the advisory committee,” Wright said. “It’s brilliant for Newsom to do that because it kind of gives him sort of a segue into those doors that he could potentially use to run for president.”

If joining Biden’s board gives Newsom access to a broader swath of voters, it gives Pritzker more opportunities to improve relationships with Democratic insiders. That could prove valuable in a future White House run.

Collin Corbett, a GOP strategist and pollster based in Illinois, told the Washington Examiner access to those insiders is precisely what Pritzker needs if he wants to parley his personal fortune and tenure as governor into a national job.

“When you look at polls across the country, he’s really not resonating with Democratic primary voters because they don’t know who he is,” Corbett said.

Biden will need all the help he can get from fellow Democrats. His job approval rating, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, was last above water on Aug. 19, 2021 (48.6% approve, 48.2% disapprove). As the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan ended that month in tragedy with the deaths of 13 service members, the president’s approval rating continued to plummet and hasn’t reversed course since.

Voters, including Democrats, think Biden is too old to run for reelection, and more elected officials are starting to talk about it.

Age a Familiar Campaign Theme
Age has been a roiling theme in the early stages of the 2024 campaign. While Biden faces scrutiny over fatigue-prone gaffes and paucity of media interviews, Trump, at 77, isn’t far behind the incumbent president.

Age is a familiar theme in American politics. West Wing devotees will recall a 2002 episode of the NBC political drama with fictional Democratic President Jed Bartlet gearing up for reelection after revealing he hid a multiple sclerosis diagnosis from the electorate the first time he ran. In television land, Bartlet faces a primary challenge not so much from a younger rival, as could have been the case with Biden in real life, but from silver-haired Indiana Gov. Jack Buckland, a onetime top athlete who top Bartlet adviser Josh Lyman admits poses a political threat due to his physical vigor.

“Your health! We don’t like your health,” Lyman exclaims in the episode’s climatic scene. “You’re a Heisman Trophy-winning football player, a U.S. Olympian, you still run the New York Marathon, and every time we see b-roll of you tossing a ball around at the local boys club, it makes people think the president’s got to campaign in an oxygen tent.”

The episode’s tension is resolved with a handshake agreement that Buckland will be considered for a Cabinet post, a perch from which he can tout his message to the country from a broader stage than just Indiana — if he promises to lay off attacking the president.

Something similar is likely playing out in real life, Mair, the GOP consultant, said.

“Biden’s people may be beginning to take the discussion about Biden’s health a little bit more seriously than they have,” she said.

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For now, though, Biden doesn’t have to worry about his own political house. And with filing deadlines quickly approaching for the early primary and caucuses states, would-be rivals are running out of time.

Biden’s only challengers to date are Marianne Williamson, an author and spiritual leader who didn’t show much promise as a candidate in 2020, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and COVID-19 vaccine conspiracist.