SAUNDERS: The other New Hampshire primary: No debates, no drama, no Biden

WASHINGTON — The question New Hampshire Democrats have to be asking themselves: Why has the Democratic Party machine been pushing them to vote for a candidate who isn’t even on the ballot?

That’s part of the argument Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., has pitched as he has challenged President Joe Biden. Phillips doesn’t think a Biden nomination will end well for his party. His message: “Donald Trump is on a big mission to win and Joe Biden is going to get creamed.”

As New Hampshire’s election day neared, Phillips argued that Democrats don’t owe the 81-year-old incumbent a coronation — not when a Biden nomination could enable Trump, the seemingly inevitable GOP nominee, to win in November.

“Joe Biden won’t debate,” Phillips said on CNN Monday. “He won’t show up. He won’t face voters. I’ve not seen him answer a question from the press that was not unscripted.”

More voters disapprove of Biden’s job performance (56.4 percent) than approve of his performance (39.8 percent), according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.

Biden ended 2023 with a 39 percent approval rating, according to Gallup, the lowest approval rating of any modern president at this time in his first term.

Phillips has a special appeal to Granite State residents. Biden and the Democratic machine tried to move the first-in-the-nation primary from New Hampshire to South Carolina as a thank you to Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C. In 2020, Clyburn’s endorsement and organization gave Biden a win he sorely needed after being clobbered in New Hampshire.

That was when Biden came in behind Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. When you’re a former vice president and a small town mayor does better than you in the country’s first primary, that’s embarrassing.

When New Hampshire didn’t go along with the primary calendar change and stayed in front of South Carolina, Democrats took away New Hampshire’s delegates — and the Biden campaign declared it wouldn’t participate.

Finally, team Biden realized that it would be even more embarrassing if the sitting president underperformed in the New Hampshire primary because his name wasn’t on the ballot. So a rush-job write-in campaign was born.

Phillips isn’t likely to win a lot of friends in his party, even if he ran, he says, to save the Democrats from defeat in November.

“I’m looking forward to Dean getting beat tonight and dropping out soon,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., posted on X. “His disrespect for the President and the leader of our party is such a reversal from the man I met during my freshman orientation. Hate to see it.”

Democratic operative Bob Mulholland went to Phillips’ campaign office Monday night. He saw, he said in a text to me, “a candidate who has drank too much vodka from his family’s distillery” — a reference to the Phillips Distilling Company, which he ran from 2000 to 2012.

Phillips has framed the attempt to slight the Granite State as a “shameful” and audacious rebuke of a 103-year tradition.

Phillips is a three-term congressman with deep pockets, but until last week, you barely saw or read about him.

Which is interesting because the national media gave loads of air time and ink to Trump’s challengers: former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.