A shadow presidential primary is occurring in New Hampshire due to an internal Democratic party feud, resulting in Joe Biden’s name not appearing on the ballot.
This has created an opportunity for Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson to mount longshot presidential bids.
Phillips, a centrist, emphasizes his bipartisan record and age relative to Biden.
“I was a darling as of 90 days ago, and now I’m the devil somehow,” Phillips said.
“But that’s how it works. I expected this because it is a nonsensical culture, of standing in line playing your role waiting your turn. We can’t do that if we hope to save this country.”
“We believe it is time to segregate the far-left and the far-right and give voice to the exhausted majority of America. Are you ready for that?” Phillips said.
“If he wrote you off, why would you write him in,” he said, noting that Biden “took the granite state for gran-ted”.
Williamson, a progressive, advocates for free college tuition and a “Department of Peace.”
Despite their efforts, Biden still leads in New Hampshire polling.
“New Hampshire historically has not been about delegates, because we have relatively few to offer in the big scheme of things,” professor Dante Scala said.
“It’s about the publicity that comes with a victory or even a better-than-expected performance in an early voting state in the nomination process, and I think they’ve been following that playbook.”
“There’s a difference between a regular conservative Republican and someone who is an autocrat,” PrimaryPivot co-founder Robert Schwarz said.
“For the issues most important to our democracy, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump are night and day.”
The situation has arisen from the Democratic National Committee’s decision to prioritize South Carolina as the first primary, disregarding New Hampshire’s results.
Notably, liberal-led efforts, including a write-in campaign for Biden and a movement to vote for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, complicate the primary landscape.
“President Biden doesn’t really care about a write-in campaign. The president would care if a candidate, such as myself, who has called for a ceasefire from the very beginning, got a lot of votes,” Williamson said.
“I find [the campaign] kind of self-indulgent, performative.”
“A majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of Americans can’t even dream of homeownership at this point. A majority of Americans cannot afford to absorb a $500 unexpected expenditure. One in four Americans live with medical debt, 75 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured,” Williamson added.
“She shares a lot of the beliefs that I’ve had for a very long time, as if she’s plucked them right out of my own brain. So that’s very refreshing,” Quinnipiac university student Lisa Swanson said of Williamson.
“I feel like it’s pretty anti-democratic, quite frankly. It is the opposite of democracy. We are supposed to vote as the people to show what we want, and the DNC doing that with Joe Biden, quite frankly, says that they don’t trust the people to make a decision,” Swanson said.
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