Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said on Monday that President Joe Biden is not the right candidate to beat former President Donald Trump in the upcoming election.
Last week, Mr. Yang endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and began campaigning alongside him.
The Minnesota Democrat represents the best chance to defeat Donald Trump, Mr. Yang told The Epoch Times during a campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire.
He added that an electoral race dominated by 80-year-olds does not reflect the choices of most Americans.
According to Mr. Yang, Dean Phillips’ campaign is going to see significant momentum beginning Tuesday in New Hampshire.
“Incumbent presidents historically get 80 to 84 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, and I think that Dean is going to do very well, and Joe Biden is going to do considerably worse than the norm for an incumbent president,” he said of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
“And I think that that should really spur conversation,“ Mr. Yang said. ”The American people deserve a Democratic nominee who will defeat Trump in the fall, and the numbers show that Joe Biden is not that candidate.”
Mr. Phillips is a 54-year-old, three-term congressman who launched a run for the Democratic nomination in October last year. He hopes to boost his numbers by appealing to New Hampshire’s sizable population of independent voters in the state’s Democratic primary on Tuesday,
When asked whether he would still support President Biden if Dean Phillips doesn’t secure the nomination, Mr. Yang did not provide a direct response.
He said he would support anyone who could prevent President Trump from returning to the White House.
“Unfortunately, I think Joe Biden was the right candidate in 2020. I do not think he’s the right candidate in 2024.”
The president’s name will not be on the ballot in the Granite State. This is due to a change in the Democratic National Committee’s rules, which designated South Carolina as the first formal primary in the Democratic presidential nomination cycle.
However, New Hampshire’s Secretary of State ignored the Democrats’ new rule and set the primary for Jan. 23.
Twenty-one Democratic candidates will appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot Tuesday, including Mr. Phillips and author Marianne Williamson, who’s running for the nomination for the second time.
Supporters of President Biden launched a campaign, asking New Hampshire voters to write in his name on voting slips.
“This is not just about a primary in the state of New Hampshire tomorrow—a primary that our very party, the Democrats, have said is meaningless,” Mr. Phillips told his supporters at the campaign event. “You know what? I think it might be just the opposite.”
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman recently endorsed Mr. Phillips and said he donated $1 million to a political action committee (PAC) backing the congressman.
In his Jan. 13 statement on X (formerly Twitter), Mr. Ackman explained in detail why Mr. Phillips would be a “truly outstanding President of the United States.”
“This is by far the largest investment I have ever made in someone running for office, and I am making this investment at a high-risk but critically important moment for his campaign,” he wrote.
Stephen Katte and Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.
