E154: Presidential Candidate Dean Phillips in conversation with the Besties + Xi's SF visit & more

At the time of the podcast (November 17, 2023), a CNN/UNH poll of likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters had Joe Biden at about 65% and Dean Phillips at 10%, and reported that 41% had not heard he was running and roughly three-quarters did not know enough about him to hold an opinion, indicating low initial support and visibility. (keyt.com) Over the following month, American Research Group’s tracking of likely New Hampshire Democratic primary voters showed Phillips rising from 17% on December 20 to 21%, 26%, 28%, and then 32% by January 20, while Biden remained in the mid‑50s, a clear upward trend. (americanresearchgroup.com) Other pollsters in January also found him in the mid‑single to mid‑teens (for example, 7–10% in CNN/UNH, 16% in Emerson), confirming that his support was meaningfully higher than at launch even if estimates differed. (en.wikipedia.org) Reporting just before the primary noted that some surveys had Phillips around 28% to Biden’s 58% and described him as having found “some momentum” in the state. (startribune.com) In the January 23, 2024 New Hampshire Democratic primary itself, Phillips ultimately received about 19–20% of the vote, a distant second to Biden’s write‑in total of about 64% but roughly double his mid‑November polling and far above his initial, near‑unknown status. (en.wikipedia.org) Nationally, he never rose beyond low single digits and soon ended his campaign after weak results elsewhere, so he did not broadly transform the race. (en.wikipedia.org) However, Chamath’s specific claim was that Phillips’ numbers, particularly in New Hampshire, would improve significantly as more voters saw him. Given the substantial polling gains there and a final vote share around 20% from a very low starting point, that prediction about his New Hampshire polling trajectory is supported by the outcomes.

• Joe Biden formally announced he would seek reelection in 2024 and proceeded to run in the Democratic primaries, where he won an overwhelming majority of delegates and became the presumptive Democratic nominee, easily defeating challengers including Rep. Dean Phillips. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Dean Phillips mounted a long-shot primary challenge focused largely on Biden’s age, but he performed poorly (e.g., about 20% in New Hampshire while Biden won via write‑in) and failed to gain traction in subsequent contests like South Carolina. (apnews.com)
• On March 6, 2024, Phillips ended his campaign and endorsed Biden, explicitly acknowledging that he was not the alternative Democratic voters wanted. (reuters.com)
• Only after Biden had already secured effective control of the delegate race and become the presumptive nominee did he later withdraw from the 2024 general election on July 21, 2024; Vice President Kamala Harris was then made the Democratic nominee. This later withdrawal does not change the fact that Phillips never defeated Biden for the Democratic nomination and, in practice, never came close to doing so. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because Biden did run in the 2024 Democratic primaries and Phillips was unable to seriously challenge, let alone defeat, him for the nomination, Friedberg’s prediction that Phillips “doesn’t stand a chance” against Biden under those structural conditions was borne out by events.

Joe Biden ultimately did not remain in the 2024 presidential race: he ended his reelection campaign in July 2024 and withdrew from the race, with major outlets reporting his decision not to seek reelection and to step aside as the Democratic nominee.

Since Sacks’s prediction was effectively that Biden would run and not drop out before the general election with a probability of about 70% (i.e., the more-likely outcome in his view), and the opposite outcome occurred (Biden did drop out before the general election), this specific prediction is counted as wrong in outcome terms.

Chamath predicted that by February or March 2024, the year-over-year U.S. CPI inflation rate would be in the low‑2% range, around 2.2%. In reality, official Bureau of Labor Statistics data show headline CPI was 3.2% year-over-year in February 2024 and 3.5% in March 2024—about a full percentage point above his forecast and still well above the Fed’s 2% target. (bls.gov) Therefore, the prediction was wrong.