Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips isn’t gloating about the results of the 2024 presidential election even though they unequivocally proved he was right about the potential dangers for Democrats if President Joe Biden ran for reelection.

“If I am a pariah, so be it,” Phillips told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS in an interview recorded for ‘At Issue with Tom Hauser.’ “I’m going to use that to my advantage to try and reform a party I think is in desperate, desperate need of it.”

Phillips announced his candidacy for president on October 27, 2023, challenging President Joe Biden in the New Hampshire primary. He was harshly criticized as “arrogant,” a “pariah,” “traitor” and a “chaos agent.” Phillips expected pushback, but it was even worse than he anticipated.

“If you can’t challenge an incumbent in the United States of America, there are plenty of countries one can go to that have dictatorships and have this all pre-written and that’s what I want to prevent,” Phillips said.

“This country was established, predicated on competition. And I think few Americans know that both parties are private corporations. They don’t answer to voters. They answer to their officers who are appointed essentially by the party leaders.”

Many, but not all, of those party leaders continue to shun Phillips for challenging Biden. “I’ve received a lot of calls from a lot of people who have been very generous with their time and their apologies. And the ones who probably said the most egregious things are the ones I don’t expect calls from and they’re the ones actually responsible for the political tragedy that we just incurred.”

Phillips says he didn’t challenge Biden with the expectation of winning. Instead, he was hoping someone else would step up and run who had a better chance of beating Republican Donald Trump.

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“I was trying to prevent something that I knew was predictable and inevitable but also preventable,” Phillips says. “And I would never take a victory lap, considering that we got crushed. The Democratic Party got crushed.”

Although Biden’s age and declining mental acuity were certainly issues for the president as he ran for reelection, Phillips says the biggest issues were the economy and inflation. Phillips says he tried to drive that point home during his campaign.

“The administration was telling people everything is fine,” he says. “And by the way, our macro economy was outperforming most. But if you are struggling to make ends meet, expenses are climbing and you are desperate to take care of your family, who cares about our macro economy? That’s the message I was trying to send to the president and my party and they didn’t listen.”

Exit polls show inflation and the economy were the top concerns of voters in 2024.

As for his political future, Phillips says he has no plans to run for governor or a U.S. Senate seat. He’s going to find ways to reform the Democratic Party in ways that will help them be more successful.

You can see the entire interview with Phillips Sunday at 10 a.m. on ‘At Issue.’