In July 2022, Phillips became the first Democratic member of Congress to say President Biden should not run for reelection and called for "generational change",
pointing to Biden's age. In July 2023, Phillips said he was considering challenging Biden in the
2024 Democratic presidential primaries. Before launching his campaign, Phillips reportedly reached out to other elected Democratic officials, such as governors
Gretchen Whitmer and
JB Pritzker, to urge them to enter the presidential primary, but they declined to speak with him directly. Phillips said that he found both the city of Washington, D.C., and the reluctance of his fellow Democrats to call on Biden not to run again to be distastefully insular and partisan. In October 2023, he announced that he would step down as co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee because his views on the
2024 U.S. presidential election were incongruent with the majority of his caucus. Many Democrats in Congress urged Phillips not to launch a primary bid against Biden. On October 27, 2023, in
Concord,
New Hampshire, Phillips announced his candidacy for president after filing the paperwork with the
Federal Election Commission the previous day. During his campaign, Phillips argued that Biden would be a weak general-election candidate due to his age and low approval ratings. He campaigned as a younger alternative who would be a stronger opponent to
Donald Trump. Phillips's campaign slogan was "Make America Affordable Again", a play on
Trump's political movement and "
Make America Great Again", as well as high voter dissatisfaction with the economy, especially inflation and prices. Phillips's campaign advisor
Steve Schmidt said that Phillips saw not being well-known "as an asset: he doesn't have decades of political stink on him to overcome, and he can build up a lot of name recognition quickly because you can get famous very fast in American politics". Schmidt added, "The idea that voters having a choice in the primary will ultimately threaten democracy by throwing the election to Trump demonstrates how far off the rails we've gotten." In November 2023, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences at
Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth Political Union co-hosted a discussion with Phillips as part of their "Path to the Presidency" speaker series to discuss his campaign and policy positions. In New Hampshire, Phillips hit the campaign trail with a “Dean Phillips for President” bus, and his 1960 International Harvester milk truck, dubbed the "government repair truck", made an appearance repainted with "Dean Phillips for President". On November 17, Phillips joined the
All-In podcast for an interview. On November 18, he discussed the case for his campaign at the Blue Jamboree rally hosted by the
Charleston County Democratic Party in
South Carolina. On November 30, Phillips visited the
Pod Save America studio to discuss his campaign. On December 8, he met with voters at a veterans' home in
Tilton, New Hampshire, and at a town hall in
Exeter, New Hampshire. On December 14, during an appearance on
Meet the Press NOW, Phillips criticized Biden's candidacy, saying, "The president is not a threat to democracy, but running and suppressing other candidates is a threat when you are behind in the polls like he is." He added, "He's a good man and someone I respect, but this delusion that he can win is a threat to democracy." On December 23, Phillips said that Biden should "thoughtfully exit" the race. On January 20, 2024, he told
Axios that he thought it was "impossible" for Biden to do the job for four more years, and that "At that stage of life, it is impossible ultimately to conduct, to prosecute the office of the American presidency in the way that this country in the world needs right now. That is an absolute truth." Phillips said he would try to gain access to the primary ballots in several states where the Democratic Party had excluded him. The
Democratic Party of Wisconsin left Phillips off the ballot; he appealed to the
Wisconsin Supreme Court on January 26, 2024. On February 2, the court unanimously ruled that Phillips should be included on the ballot. Phillips said his campaign depended on alternative media platforms to get his message across because
MSNBC and
CNN would not interview him, despite giving every Republican primary challenger to Trump a town hall. Phillips accused Biden campaign representatives of pressuring liberal media outlets into
blackballing and deplatforming him.
The New York Times reported that during his campaign, Phillips found himself deplatformed, taken off the ballot in some states, and rarely invited on television to make his case. Phillips called the DNC's ruling that
New Hampshire's presidential primary was "meaningless" and that no New Hampshire delegates would be counted at the convention "one of the most egregious affronts to democracy that I've ever seen in my entire lifetime". In a statement to
Politico, he called
Florida Democrats' handling of the
primary process a "blatant act of electoral corruption" and demanded that Biden "condemn and immediately address" it. Phillips added, "The intentional disenfranchisement of voters runs counter to everything for which our Democratic Party and country stand. Our mission as Democrats is to defeat authoritarians, not become them." Phillips insisted throughout his campaign that the Democratic Party was "delusional" to believe Biden could beat Trump in a rematch. An argument and central critique of Phillips's campaign was that if Democrats created room for a competitive primary against the unpopular sitting president, voters would have a chance to hear other points of view. He argued that the Democratic establishment was choking off his challenge because it couldn't accept that "Biden is going to get creamed". In public, Phillips was ridiculed. In private, others in the Democratic Party shared his concerns. Phillips said that in his first 100 days as president, he intended to build "the most extraordinary bipartisan cabinet in American history". His other first-100-day priorities included "
zero-based budgeting" and hiring an international consulting firm to conduct a "top-down assessment" of the federal government. Phillips told
CNN that when he entered the presidential race, "This was not about me ... But my inability to attract other candidates, to inspire the president to recognize that it is time, compels me to serve my country because it appears that President Joe Biden is going to lose the next election." Shurtleff said in January 2023 that he would endorse a candidate other than Biden if one ran. New Hampshire state representative
Tom Schamberg also endorsed Phillips.
Forward Party founder
Andrew Yang consistently expressed support for Phillips's campaign since soon after its launch, and co-hosted campaign events with him in Manchester and Hanover, New Hampshire, on January 18, 2024. In January 2024, billionaire hedge fund manager
Bill Ackman said he supported Phillips's campaign, donating $1 million to his We Deserve Better campaign PAC. On January 8, 2024, Phillips participated in a debate with
Marianne Williamson hosted by
New England College in
Manchester, New Hampshire. On January 12,
NewsNation hosted a forum featuring Phillips and other Democratic presidential candidates. Biden was invited but did not attend.
Dan Abrams moderated the discussion. The same day, Phillips appeared on
The Breakfast Club radio show. On January 20, he appeared on the Modern Wisdom podcast with
Chris Williamson to discuss his campaign. On January 22, Phillips met with voters at a meeting of a Rotary Club in
Nashua, New Hampshire. On January 23, he scolded reporters during a press gaggle in New Hampshire for not focusing on the issues Americans cared about, namely the economy, inflation, health care, Social Security, homelessness in their cities, and education, not the reporters' "clickbait" questions. On January 27, Biden and Phillips spoke about their bids for the Democratic nomination at the
South Carolina Democratic Party's First-in-the-Nation Celebration dinner in
Columbia, South Carolina. Other notable people who endorsed Phillips are angel investor and podcaster
Jason Calacanis, Curai Health CEO Neal Khosla (son of
Vinod Khosla), entrepreneur and philanthropist
Jed McCaleb, Galaxy Investment Partners CEO
Michael Novogratz, political and corporate strategist
Steve Schmidt, and former
Bernie Sanders campaign manager and political strategist
Jeffrey P. Weaver. The editorial boards of the
New Hampshire Union Leader,
Conway Daily Sun, and
The Detroit News endorsed Phillips. Phillips lost the
New Hampshire Democratic primary to Biden, receiving 19.9% of the vote. Biden was a write-in candidate. On February 4, 2024, after his loss in the
South Carolina primary, Phillips vowed to remain in the race as "a mission of principle". In the
California primary, he received 2.8% of the total votes cast, with 100,284 votes. In the
Oklahoma primary, he received 8.9% of the vote and a plurality in
Cimarron County. On March 6, Phillips suspended his campaign following
Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden. After the endorsement, Biden called Phillips on the phone. Phillips said the two "had a wonderful conversation" that ended in an invitation to discuss the state of the 2024 race at the
White House. Phillips had the second-most awarded pledged delegates of any candidate in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries, with four, In the
Nebraska primary, Phillips received 9.8% of the total vote and earned one delegate by receiving the most votes of any candidate in
Logan County, with 55.6% of the vote. Based on the Nebraska primary results, one Phillips delegate represented
Madison County at the Nebraska Democratic State Convention. In the
Missouri primary, he tied with Biden in
Clark County.
Post-presidential campaign On April 16, 2024, Phillips blamed the national political parties, the media, and "apathetic" voters for his failure to succeed as a modern-day
Paul Revere, warning his party of the dangers of allowing an aging Biden to once again take on Trump. He also said he was surprised by the strength of the nation's two-party system, a "
duopoly" that has "a decreasing focus on the country and an increasing focus on winning". Phillips said: "I had a network of donors who could have financially supported the campaign, but most of them were too scared to touch it. If you want to maintain your access to power, you have every incentive not to speak up." After the
first presidential debate between Biden and Trump,
Politico reported that a former senior Biden White House official said, "
No Labels and Dean Phillips won this debate." On July 11,
Jermaine Johnson, a Democratic state representative from
Richland County, South Carolina, apologized to Phillips on behalf of those who criticized, ignored, and shunned him despite not being one of them himself. On July 19, D.J. Tice, an opinion columnist for the
Minnesota Star Tribune, apologized to Phillips for his self-described snide coverage of Phillips's campaign. Biden withdrew from the presidential election on July 21, 2024. The same day, shortly before Biden ended his campaign, Phillips urged Democrats to hold an "immediate" vote of confidence on Biden in a
Wall Street Journal column and
Face the Nation interview amid growing concerns about his reelection chances. Despite claiming that he still endorsed Biden, Phillips also said on
Face the Nation that "it is time [for Biden] to step aside and turn this over to a new generation." The
Minnesota Star Tribune reported in August that Phillips said, "If people write anything, I just hope that they might write if [Biden] had debated me then and he had been on one stage, unscripted, with a national audience, and he demonstrated that decline then, this would have been very different circumstances. ... And that's what I was trying to do." On July 22, 2024, the day after
Biden withdrew, Phillips backed eventual Democratic presidential nominee
Kamala Harris but also proposed a straw poll of delegates ahead of the Democratic National Convention to determine the party's top four presidential contenders, who would then take part in four town halls outlining their platforms. After the town halls, the delegates would vote to choose the nominee. Phillips explained his reasoning for running against Biden in an August 20 interview at the
2024 Democratic National Convention, saying that he had argued as early as July 2022 that Biden should "pass the torch"; after Biden withdrew in July 2024, some of his colleagues understood why he ran. Phillips was a
superdelegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention and told
Politico on the convention floor, "I was trying to be a Paul Revere, not a George Washington." Both
CNN's lead Washington anchor
Jake Tapper and political commentator
Tim Miller gave Phillips credit for his early questioning of Biden's bid for reelection. On August 17, 2024, an opinion column in the
Duluth News Tribune argued that "the Democratic Party owes Dean Phillips an apology". On November 10, 2024, journalist
Shannon Bream asked Phillips whether he felt overlooked by his party during the campaign and election; he replied, "My voice, yes, was ignored, but tens of millions of Americans' voices were ignored and suppressed and disenfranchised." On November 11, 2024, former U.S. representative
Joe Cunningham wrote that Phillips "showed immense courage by openly encouraging a primary. And when no one stepped forward offered himself up so voters would have a choice." In an interview after the election, Phillips said: "My run wasn't about me. It was about having a legitimate, invitational, competitive, spirited primary. That means debate. And had there been other candidates on a primary stage, I'm almost certain that Americans, at least Democratic primary voters, would have selected someone in a better position to ultimately beat the most dangerous Republican candidate of our lifetime."
HuffPost reported that after the election Phillips said of his White House bid, "I would do it a thousand times again... My only regret—and it's a big one—is that so many of my colleagues who felt exactly the same way couldn't find the courage to say and do something about it." On November 24, Phillips participated in a podcast with
The Lever founder and editor-in-chief
David Sirota. Sirota credited him for his early warnings to Democrats about Biden's electability. U.S. representative
Lloyd Doggett, the first Democrat in Congress to openly call for Biden to withdraw from the election after the first presidential debate, said after Trump won, "I only regret I didn't do it earlier ... I believe that the only person in our caucus who doesn't share some responsibility for the outcome is Dean Phillips, who came out early." On December 26,
Mother Jones named Phillips a "Hero of 2024" for being the only elected official to challenge Biden in the Democratic primary who tried to make the case that Biden was unfit for office. As part of the "11 Democratic Thinkers on What the Party Needs Right Now" article in
Politico, Andrew Yang called for Phillips to become the new
Democratic National Committee Chairman. He wrote: "First, the Democrats should apologize for sandbagging Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. After, they should name Dean Phillips the new chair of the DNC, as the only Democrat with the character to sacrifice his own career for the good of the country." On December 28, 2024,
Politico reported that Phillips was right about Biden's reelection campaign and that his decision to launch a primary challenge proved prescient after Biden's performance in his debate against Trump. The same day, the
Guardian reported that Phillips was "saddened" to be vindicated in his prediction that Biden could not win reelection. On December 30,
The New York Times dubbed Phillips the "Most Prophetic" in its 2024 High School Yearbook of American Politics for challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination. On January 7, 2025,
New York Times columnist
Bret Stephens wrote that Phillips should be nominated for a
Profile in Courage Award because it was left to him to "play the part of the boy who says
the emperor has no clothes". On January 22, during a podcast with
New York University professor
Scott Galloway, Democratic political strategist
Jessica Tarlov said, "there are all these Democrats who now feel emboldened to talk about how they knew Biden shouldn't have been the nominee... and the time for that was in the public square, frankly, when Dean Phillips was screaming from the rooftops, 'if I have to be the guy I'll be the guy'". On February 9, former U.S. representative
Tim Roemer wrote the Democratic Party an open letter saying, "We had an opportunity during the primary campaign (when we ignored Rep. Dean Phillips' warnings) to voice our concerns about Biden's age or to remind him that we voted for him in 2020 to defeat Donald Trump and serve one term." On February 14, former U.S. representative
John Delaney tweeted, "Democrats certainly would have been better served listening to Dean Phillips because it turns out that he was 100% correct in his assessment of the 2024 election so perhaps the better plan might be to not ignore what he has to say but listen and learn?" On July 10, 2025,
The Hill reported that CNN interviewed Phillips about
New York City mayoral nominee
Zohran Mamdani. Phillips said: "Mamdani, as you have referenced just moments ago, is a grave threat to Democrats around the country. He could be the mayor of New York." He added: "I think that would be detrimental for the party. Anyone who talks about seizing the means of production or opening government-run grocery stores is at great odds with most of the country." ==Electoral history==