By The campaign of Democratic long candidate Dean Phillips appears to be on its last legs, but the Minnesota representative claims that he’s not ready to give in the ghost quite yet.
Earlier in the week, Politico reported the Phillips campaign announced that a “significant portion of his campaign staff” will be laid off.
“I found it almost impossible to raise enough to do this campaign the way I want. And today, sadly, I had to announce layoffs to a lot of my staff members,” he wrote on Twitter.
I love running for President, but today I had to make some tough decisions.
But with 75% of Americans saying Trump is too corrupt and Biden is too old, I’m not giving up!
If you’re ready for change, join me at https://t.co/L4Hf3zEZKv! pic.twitter.com/mQleNnh2vs
— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) February 16, 2024
Phillips started his presidential campaign last fall, pitching himself as a younger, more coherent alternative to President Biden for Democrats. He said, noted CBS News, that “he was running for ‘the exhausted majority’ and cited issues such as the nation’s debt, military spending and high taxes. He was easily defeated by Mr. Biden in the New Hampshire and South Carolina Democratic primaries, and was not on the ballot in Nevada, but Phillips says the journey has been ‘joyful’ thus far.”
Despite claiming that his campaign exists to “protect democracy,” Biden has done everything possible to hamstring the fellow Democrat’s campaign, including trying to rig primary elections by booting Phillips off the ballot, which has received the ire of other former candidates for president.
Despite speculation, the Democrat also announced his intention to stay in the race, saying, “I made a promise to them and I’m gonna make it to you, I’m not giving up. I’m gonna continue.”
In a post on Twitter, wrote The Hill, “Phillips called on supporters to donate so he could stay in the race — claiming a majority of Americans believe Biden is ‘too old’ and the GOP front-runner, former President Trump, is ‘too corrupt.’
His comment on the president comes after negative press surrounding a damning special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. While no charges were brought against the incumbent, Special Counsel Robert Hur painted Biden as an old man as an ‘elderly man with a poor memory.’
Phillips defended Biden as a “decent man” after the report’s release, calling it a ‘sad day’ in an interview with Fox News. But, he did not denounce concerns over Biden’s age.”
While Biden’s last standing Democratic challenger remains in the race, another fellow party member has announced that he will not be running as a third-party candidate.
The New York Times reported that “Senator Joe Manchin III, the conservative West Virginia Democrat, on Friday announced that he would not seek the White House in 2024, ending months of speculation that he might challenge President Biden as an independent candidate.
‘I will not be seeking a third-party run,’ he said in a speech in Morgantown, W.Va. ‘I will not be involved in a presidential run.’
Since Mr. Manchin, 76, announced in November that he would not run for re-election, he had been the subject of months of public and private guesswork about whether he would seek the presidency. In particular, he had flirted with becoming the candidate for No Labels, a centrist group aiming to recruit a third option in what is shaping up to look like a general-election race between Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.
But on Friday, he pledged, ‘I will not be a deal breaker or a spoiler.’”
That should be music to the ears of the Biden campaign, which has panicked over the speculation that the moderate Democrat might run a middle-of-the-road campaign in an election in which both the Republicans and Democrats have high disapproval ratings.
Manchin was by far the most high-profile candidate possible for No Labels, a bipartisan group looking to run a candidate in 2024. Their other option, former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, recently announced a plan to run for Senate.
The announcement by Manchin was surprising for some. The previous day the West Virginia senator had said he’d pick Mitt Romney or former Ohio Senator Rob Portman as his vice president.
Romney has said he would not accept a third-party candidacy.
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