DNC cleared way for Biden

In retrospect, it’s remarkable that an 81-yearold president with lousy job approval ratings who many expected would serve only one term ended up being challenged only by a self-help author, Marianne Williamson, and a little-known Democratic representative from Minnesota, Dean Phillips.

One of the most quietly consequential political decisions of 2023 was the Democratic National Committee’s shuffling of the party’s presidential primary schedule, moving South Carolina to first, Nevada to second and Michigan to third.

New Hampshire insists that it’s holding the first Democratic primary on Tuesday, but the DNC calls the primary “meaningless” and says it won’t allocate any delegates based on the results. Iowa, the traditional first contest, got pushed back to Super Tuesday, March 5—partially as punishment for the state party’s inability to count the votes quickly in 2020, and partially because Democrats deemed it an insufficiently diverse state.

Pretend you’re some popular Democratic governor with presidential ambitions and many years until you reach age 80. If you choose to run a primary challenge against Biden this cycle, your first effort would be to attempt to beat Biden in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, one of his strongest states, and where he finished almost 30 percentage points ahead of Bernie Sanders in the last cycle.

Then it would be on to Nevada, where maybe you would have a shot, as Biden finished second, behind Sanders, with about 20 percent of the vote last time. But remember, at that point in 2020, the vote was still splintered among a handful of candidates, including Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren.

And then it would be on to Michigan, where Biden beat Sanders solidly in 2020, 53 percent to 36 percent. Are Biden’s numbers in Michigan worrisome right now? Sure. Are they worrisome enough that Biden could lose a primary? Unlikely.

For any upstart challenger who wanted to climb to a win through retail campaigning and shaking hands in diners and hosting town halls, those are a rough first few states.

Then comes Super Tuesday, where you would need the resources to compete against an incumbent president in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.

It all adds up to Mission: Impossible. A successful primary challenger would have to be a gifted campaigner, have a top-tier fundraising network, or be strong in the new early primary states—and preferably, have all those traits.

And if you run a primary challenge against an incumbent president, all the outcomes short of total victory in the general election are bad.

Early in 2023, the DNC challenger-proofed the Democrats’ presidential primary process. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson are learning that the hard way.