Dean Phillips for President. Again.
It's The Attention Economy, Stupid.
Where have you gone, Dean Phillips? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
In the last election season you showed courage when the unelectable Joe Biden needed a challenger, launching a principled but doomed presidential campaign. Having famously misjudged your timing, one positive outcome of your belly flop of an effort was its stunning show of audacity. We need that audacity now.
One pillar of your campaign was a proposed antidote to the crisis-level lack of coherent Democratic messaging, which was bad then and has only gotten worse. Now with President Trump, Chancellor Musk and MAGA media dominating the mental environment, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is out here hand-signaling sexual arousal, the newly elected DNC Chair Ken Martin is celebrating “good billionaires,” and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is hawking a kids book on the ABCs of democracy. Where would we be without our leaders teaching children about “normalcy over negativity” and “understanding over ugliness?”
These are dire straits. Rightwing media dominance is not new, but the disparity between the parties’ communications efficacy has never been worse in my lifetime. We need you now, Dean Phillips, to emulate former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and begin holding daily, hours long press conferences to draw attention away from Trump and Musk and counter their corrupt and fraudulent narrative. We need you to run for President.
Announcing your presidential aspirations is crucial for this to work. It would be far less extreme than the daily grievances the Trump administration is visiting on the American people and our global allies—and it would attract a lot of attention, which is the point.
Announcing your presidential aspirations is crucial for this to work. Audacious as it may be for a politician to announce such a run well before even the midterm elections, in reality it would be far less extreme than the daily grievances the Trump administration is visiting on the American people and our global allies. And it would attract a lot of attention, which is the point.
We now live in a fully formed attention economy, so your startlingly early campaign announcement would spark considerable reaction and help drive media coverage of daily press conferences and—soon enough—big rallies that align yet distinguish from Senator Bernie Sanders’ budding anti-oligarchy tour.
People will mock you. They will laugh, insult, lambast, and pillory you. That is all to the good, so long as you continue to attract their attention. Keep going. Keep speaking, for hours every day, answering every question, appearing on every podcast, rallying in the bluest and the reddest districts of the country. Just sop up every iota of attention you can. And Dean: listen to your gut. No consultants, no pollsters, no corporate lobbyists. Be your authentic self, even as I and others on the left lash out at you for taking positions we find abhorrent. You’ve got to be real.
Be the milquetoast midwestern businessman you – and millions of voters – wish to see in the world. Fuck Mark Cuban, forget Steven A. Smith. You actually know from which you speak, and this is your time to seize the spotlight and brutalize the increasingly unpopular Trump/Musk administration.
Remember who you are: a mediocre, white man who is neither young nor old, neither handsome nor ugly, genuinely successful in the art of the deal and truly committed to public service. Be the milquetoast midwestern businessman you – and millions of voters – wish to see in the world. Fuck Mark Cuban, forget Steven A. Smith. You actually know from which you speak, and this is your time to seize the spotlight and brutalize the increasingly unpopular Trump/Musk administration.
And let me be candid: I don’t like you. I don’t want another moderate neoliberal to become the party’s nominee and I sure as shit don’t want you to be President. But we can get to that later. Right now, we just have to staunch the bleeding in the zeitgeist. Someone has to be out there every day speaking the truth and taking it to Trump and Musk. And while you’re at it, you might as well hammer the Democrats for failing in their duty to stand up for Americans and adequately fight back with the power they do have.
Congressional Democrats are indeed polling at historically low levels. Dean, this moment is an unprecedented opportunity for a well-spoken centrist to lash out at the right for embracing fascism and to castigate the left—in words you find comfortable—for failing to be effectively antifascist. Who knows, you might just run away with the nomination.
Your presence will create pressure for other Democrats to jump in the race. Others will stay on the sidelines, but will follow your lead and join the narrative battles with their own daily actions and publicity stunts. If Republicans can run Washington with two concurrent Presidents, then Democrats can certainly activate more than one “shadow President” rallying the country with a weird little coffee buses or fireside chats.
Your instinct to be the first one out the gate was correct, but it was sixteen months too early. Now it’s your time. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and this is your patriotic duty. Dean 2028: Everyone’s Invited.
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This piece is a great reminder that Dean Phillips was on the right side of history. If more Dems had blown the whistle on Biden’s unfitness for office we may have avoided this nightmare. Good job singing the praises of an unsung hero who tried to save the Democratic Party from itself.
He’s a billionaire and was only 1/2 way to being on the right side of history. I liked him when he first ran in MN but he’s changed - I think he’s gone too moderate.