CHICAGO, Illinois — President Joe Biden’s closest rival in the Democrat presidential primary, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), told Breitbart News that he would have liked to see more competition for the nomination after Biden dropped out of the race.
Breitbart News caught up with Phillips, who exited the race in March, on the concourse of the United Center on Monday afternoon, hours before the first night of the convention got underway.
When asked if he would have liked to see a different process unfold after Biden dropped out of the race and was quickly replaced at the top of the ticket by Vice President Kamala Harris, Phillips said he wished other candidates were invited into the fold but emphasized, “That didn’t happen.”
“My core principle is that competition is the vitamin of democracy and that, yes, we should have run a different process from the beginning, which was simply to invite other candidates. That didn’t happen,” Phillips said.
Despite his sentiment and the fact that the nomination process was left up to a few thousand delegates and not millions of Democrat primary voters, Phillips believes that Democrats have reached the best outcome, given the circumstances.
“I think, in light of what did transpire, there’s no better outcome that we could have hoped for than the one that actually transpired,” Phillips told Breitbart News. “But, generally speaking, yes, we should be enhancing competition, encouraging debate, welcoming candidates, not suppressing and not discouraging.”
“It worked out well this time, but that won’t always be the case. And we were this close, this close to what I’d call another democratic disaster, and I want to be wary of that in the future,” he added.
Phillips, a late entry into the primary, registered five delegates and was the second-best performer behind Biden in the delegate count after all states had held their nominating contests, NBC News reported.
Biden led with some 3,900 delegates before he caved to a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign from top Democrats, donors, and Hollywood elites to oust him from the top of the ticket.
