Rep. Dean Phillips Vows To March On After New Hampshire Democratic Primary

MANCHESTER, N.H. ― As early results showed him breaking the 20% marker he had set for himself, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) celebrated with supporters on Tuesday night and promised to continue his campaign full-steam ahead.

Phillips conceded that President Joe Biden had won New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary, though the sitting president wasn’t actually on the ballot. (Biden’s supporters in the state launched a successful campaign to convince voters to write him in.)

But in his remarks to a few dozen supporters at the Millyard Museum, Phillips insisted that the performance of his campaign in the state, after it officially launched in late October, validated his view that Biden cannot defeat former President Donald Trump in November.

“Congratulations to President Biden, who absolutely won tonight, but by no means in a way that a strong incumbent president should,” he said, after walking onstage to the song “Taking It to the Streets.”

“Joe Biden is a good man. He is a fine man ― yes, he is, everybody. He’s our president,” Phillips said, seeking to quiet the boos of a couple of Trump-supporting hecklers. “But I gotta tell you, everyone, he cannot win. The polls are saying he cannot win, his approval numbers are saying he can’t win. And the fact that an unknown congressman from Minnesota… said, ‘I’m going to come up here and run for president,’ just got 21% ― that says something too, my friends.”

Phillips also argued that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s loss to Trump in New Hampshire’s Republican primary further cemented the rationale for continuing his campaign.

“This was the one state they thought, maybe if it happened here, maybe it could happen,” he said of Haley’s hopes of victory.

“It didn’t