CONCORD, N.H. — The presidential campaign Dean Phillips will launch on Friday is such a longshot that some of his colleagues call it a vanity project. Other top Democrats privately deem it a mid-life crisis.

It may also be the clearest distillation to date of the undercurrent of discontent with Joe Biden among Democratic Party voters, even if it’s not likely to represent much of a genuine threat to the president.

Phillips, a millionaire businessperson, sees his quixotic bid differently. In private conversations, the Minnesota Democrat has stressed that voters need a generational alternative to the 80-year-old president. A half-dozen people who have spoken directly to him say he has sincerely described feeling something akin to obligation to primary Biden, while also expressing concern about Biden’s ability to beat former President Donald Trump a second time. He is “seeing a problem that everyone sees, but no one is talking about,” said one of those people, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. They described Phillips as “frustrated” by it all.

“He was really earnest in his presentation of it. He framed it as this revelation he had when he was in Vietnam, visiting the site of his father’s death,” said another person who spoke to Phillips, citing the trip the lawmaker took last spring to the place where his father was killed in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War. “But I don’t think he understands the institutional forces that he is going to be up against and how — even if a lot of Democrats privately share some of his fears — no one is going to line up behind him.”

Initially, Phillips told these people he wanted to publicly recruit another candidate to this effort. In August, he called for a “moderate governor” to step up. “I thought there was a way for him to raise this concern, identify if there was space for another candidate, get someone else in, and then gracefully bow out and resume being a member of Congress,” said a third person who spoke to Phillips directly.

“Now, I feel like he missed the window to land this plane,” the person added.

Instead, Phillips himself decided to run — formally filing paperwork for “Dean 24, Inc.” to the Federal Elections Commission on Thursday night. Several people said the campaign Phillips is likely to mount will bear a strong resemblance to his 2018 congressional bid.

During that contest, Phillips shunned much of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s advice, relying on his deep marketing background instead. He drove a 1960 International Harvester milk truck to 32 cities and towns across his suburban Minneapolis-based House district, running a retail-heavy election. He argued for spending less on TV than on digital ads, while largely refusing to go negative on his Republican opponent.

His approach infuriated many Democrats in Washington. He won anyway, flipping a seat that hadn’t elected a Democrat in decades.

Signs of Phillips dusting off that playbook are already evident. A “Dean Phillips for President” bus, seen recently driving around New Hampshire by two operatives in the state, is tagged with a 2018 slogan: “Everyone’s invited.” The “government repair truck” he used in 2018 is making another appearance, too, repainted with “Dean Phillips for President.”

“He wants to scale his 2018 campaign to New Hampshire, if not to the national level,” said one of the people who has spoken directly with the representative.

But a presidential primary is not a congressional race, especially when your objective is to take out an incumbent. And there are other clear and serious hurdles ahead.

Phillips has already failed to make the ballot in Nevada, the second presidential nominating state, and he’s relying, in part, on a bombastic former Republican operative to lead it. In New Hampshire, where he plans to ground his bid, he’s a total unknown, needing to introduce himself to the state party chair just two weeks ago.

He’s also squaring off against Biden, who’s sitting on $91 million in campaign cash with the entire party machinery arrayed behind him.

For its part, the Biden campaign is not expected to engage the Phillips campaign much, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s thinking. To the extent they do, however, the source noted that they would cast him as wealthy and out-of-touch, while highlighting his 100 percent voting record with Biden.

“Everyone I know, to a person, is mystified, perplexed and frustrated by this move, and Dean has not really offered any public explanation,” said Jeff Blodgett, a top Minnesota Democratic operative and donor adviser. “People here are all in on Biden and focused on the work to get him reelected.”

Steve Schmidt, a top campaign strategist to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, is working with Phillips, which several Democrats called a “red flag.” In 2020, Schmidt also advised former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, another wealthy businessperson who considered an Independent presidential run. In addition, Phillips has brought on Ondine Fortune as a media buyer, while a firm led by Bill Fletcher, a Tennessee-based ad-maker, obtained permits for Phillips’ Friday event. Several staffers from Phillips’ congressional campaign are also filling out the early operation.

Phillips’ New Hampshire-focused bid comes at a particularly fraught moment for Democrats in the state, who lost their first-in-the-nation primary status for the 2024 presidential cycle earlier this month. The Democratic National Committee, with Biden’s blessing, reordered the presidential nominating calendar last year, elevating South Carolina to the first-place slot.

But Phillips hasn’t yet reached out to South Carolina Democrats, a sign “he’s not serious,” said South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Christale Spain, who called Phillips “a distraction” because “any serious Democratic candidate, would understand that Black voters in South Carolina have been the backbone of the Democratic Party.” The state’s presidential filing deadline closes on Nov. 10.

New Hampshire, meanwhile, plans to run an unsanctioned contest, which is unlikely to yield any delegates for whomever wins the state in January. This week, the Biden campaign confirmed that the president’s name will not appear on the ballot, but top New Hampshire Democrats are expected to lead a write-in effort on his behalf. Marianne Williamson, who ran for president in 2020, will also appear on the New Hampshire ballot.

Turmoil over the calendar is a factor for former New Hampshire House Speaker Steve Shurtleff, who said he “hopes” Phillips runs “because of the way things have been lined up by the DNC,” who are “trying to take it out of the hands of the people.”

“I’ve got respect for Phillips that he may decide to get in the race, knowing what the price he might pay,” Shurtleff continued. “By challenging the president, for someone like Dean, it could be the end of his political career.”

That question about Phillips’ future is still baffling Minnesota Democrats, many of whom said they expected him to run for statewide office one day. Instead, Democrats are lining up to run for his House seat, where he’s already drawn a primary challenger in Ron Harris, a DNC executive committee member.

“I believe every other Democratic member of Congress in Minnesota is supporting Biden, so it doesn’t help when your home team is on board with the incumbent president, while you’re trying to mount a challenge,” said Mike Erlandson, a former chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. “I don’t know that the congressman is particularly concerned one way or the other about what other people in political places of power think, though this probably doesn’t help him with a statewide office run at home.”

Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.

An instant candidate for a worst film of the year list, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” from Universal and Blumhouse is based on a 2014 video-game by Scott Cawthon. Directed by Emma Tammi (“The Wind”) and written by Tammi, Cawthon and Seth Cuddeback (“Mateo”), the film is at its best when it merely makes no sense. Meet Mike (Josh Hutcherson of those godforsaken original “Hunger Games” films). When Mike was a boy he was charged by his mother with keeping an eye on his little brother Garrett (Lucas Grant), who was taken by a faceless man in a car and never seen again.

Cut to sleep-deprived adult Mike (Hutcherson). He lives with his much younger sister Abby (“Stranger Things”-ready Piper Rubio), who obsessively draws pictures of her with Mike and some cartoon animals. Almost unemployable, Mike accepts a job offered by a weirdly menacing agent (Matthew Lillard) at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, an abandoned 1980’s-era pizzeria/arcade.

Like in the game, Mike’s job is to sit before an array of security camera screens at night and make sure no shenanigans occur. Mike has a habit of taking sleeping pills in order to induce a reoccurring dream in which he experiences the moment Garrett was taken while he, Garrett and his parents were on a camping trip. Ergo, Mike is the sleeping security guard. He relives the moment Garrett was taken over and over. If this sounds like the plot of a bad Stephen King story, it is. I would hazard a guess that King is the favorite writer of the creators of this film’s plot. But they in no way share King’s power to mine our collective dreams for horror gold.

The plot will further involve “ghost kids” who appear to Mike in his dreams, animatronic, giant robotic and cartoonish animals – a bear, a rabbit, a duck, a fox and more – that lurk at Fazbear’s and can track down and kill humans in hideous ways for a PG-13 movie and a strange police officer named Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail, “Once Upon a Time”), who appears to be the only police officer in town. We are reminded repeatedly that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza was huge in the 1980s, and in some scenes the robotic animals can be seen performing The Romantics’ 1983 hit “Talking in Your Sleep” (Get it?). Mike takes Abby to work (?). She befriends the strange creatures in the shadows. How? Why? “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is only for the most gullible viewers. The rest will find their eyelids impossibly hard to hold up.

In an opening scene, a security guard at Freddy’s runs through a maze of hallways before being strapped to a chair and get his face chewed off (off camera). Someone else gets a head bitten off. One of the animatronic creatures is just a skull-like head. Somehow, this thing gets from place to place and flies through the air without appendages or explanation. Mike and Abby’s evil Aunt Jane (a scenery-chewing Mary Stuart Masterson, speaking of the ’80s) appears in a few badly-staged scenes to demand custody of Abby. If she had a mustache, she’d twirl its ends. Hutcherson does a lot of running in the film and not a lot of acting. But he is hardly to blame. The makers of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” appear to forget that you need a screenplay to make a movie, not just a collection of things that happen. The film wants awfully to be a variation on a theme of King’s “It.” It ain’t.

(“Five Nights at Freddy’s” contains gruesome imagery, violence and endangered children)

“Five Nights at Freddy’s”

Rated PG-13. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters. Grade: D

There’s real history in this week’s fictional gay “Fellow Travelers” series that highlights the political horrors of queer life in 1950s Washington, D.C., and the horrors of the ‘80s AIDS plague.

“Fellow Travelers,” beginning on Paramount+ Friday and Showtime Sunday, is adapted from Thomas Mallon’s book by the Oscar-nominated “Philadelphia” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner. He held the rights for a decade before making this eight-part series.

“I fell in love with the two lovers at the center of Mallon’s novel,” Nyswaner, 67, said in a Zoom press conference of Hawkins Fuller (played by Matt Bomer), a slick if closeted D.C. insider, and the very Catholic, closeted Tim Laughlin (England’s Jonathan Bailey).

“It was the kind of relationship I find compelling: A relationship of opposites. They’re not meant to be together but are powerfully drawn to each other. I was immediately taken with that — and then this is a drama with high stakes. I know about that! I did three seasons of ‘Homeland.’

“In the ‘50s everything — your life, your career, your future — could be destroyed if people discovered you were queer.”

Casting was a no-brainer.  Bomer, Nyswaner revealed, “was onboard for three years before we got to make the thing. Matt is so good at what he’s thinking and feeling — without saying what he is thinking and feeling.”

As for Bailey, who like Bomer is an out gay actor, “As soon as we had our greenlight Jonathan was at the top of our list. The only problem was he was busy shooting ‘Bridgerton’ in London” and they needed to coordinate filming schedules.

“Fellow Travelers” highlights the now-infamous Red Scare, led by Senator Joe McCarthy of Minnesota and his assistant, the now notorious Roy Cohn, to ferret out Communists in government.  It soon transmuted into the Lavender Scare, a witch hunt for “perverts,” gays and lesbians, in the State Department.

The series is an expansion of the book, including the creation of two major Black characters.  Explained Nyswaner, “There are two major changes. We go through several decades, from the ‘50s to the ‘70s and ‘80s — and the book is entirely in the ‘50s.

“To air a show in 2023,” he continued, “with no Black characters didn’t feel right to me. So we went to research. There were a lot of ‘Black newspapers’ and lot of representations of those in Washington. A couple of people came from Black journalism who went to white newspapers and we modeled the character of Marcus (Jelani Alladin) on that. He had to protect his Black identity and therefore has to hide his homosexuality at the same time. We’re proud we made our Black characters as complex as our white characters.”

“Fellow Travelers” streams on Paramount+ Friday and on Showtime Sunday

International commerce flowing across the border between the United States and Mexico is a shared responsibility between our two nations and an important area of focus for our collective long-term prosperity. As such, news of President Joe Biden’s plans to finalize a ban on menthol cigarettes is a source of great concern.

Powerful Mexican cartels, sophisticated multibillion-dollar criminal enterprises, are already trafficking illicit tobacco to fund their violent operations. The current regulated market for menthol cigarettes is $30 billion. A nationwide prohibition on menthols will create a tremendous profit incentive for these cartels to become more aggressive in their activity.

As the General Director of the National Citizen Observatory of Security, Justice and Legality A.C. (ONC), and a National Security Council of Mexico member, I know what the cartels are capable of. These high-tech, organized crime networks continue to innovate and diversify beyond drugs and weapons. They evolve into new products and industries where they can capitalize on growing demand while also minimizing risk.

Over the past few years, the illicit tobacco market has allowed these criminal networks to generate massive revenue – rivaling narcotics – with a fraction of the risk. The sale of illegal cigarettes is already a multibillion-dollar market in the U.S. Criminal networks profit from the price and tax disparities between states. Increasing the transborder traffic of contraband cigarettes from Mexico into the U.S. should give policymakers pause.

The cartels know better than most that tobacco restrictions like bans or taxes won’t reduce consumer demand for an addictive product. So, when states like California ban menthol cigarettes and legitimate retailers are prohibited from selling products to meet consumer demand, the opportunistic cartels quickly become the suppliers of choice.

Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug cartel is Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). According to our estimates, CJNG’s assets are in excess of $20 billion, with a presence in at least 27 of the 32 Mexican states. The CJNG, which has been sanctioned by the United States for its role in drug trafficking, is a glaring example of a modern cartel diversifying and smuggling tobacco along the same routes that it traffics narcotics like fentanyl, weapons, and sadly, even humans.

Recent investigations have linked the CJNG to Tobacco International Holdings SA, a Switzerland-registered corporation. This linkage has enabled the cartel to monopolize the Mexican cigarette market and evade sanctions as it ships tobacco into the U.S.

The House Committee on Homeland Security chairman emphasized the threat of cartel tobacco trafficking in a recent letter to the secretary of Homeland Security.

My fear, and that of many colleagues in government and international security, is that a nationwide menthol cigarette in the U.S. will play right into the hands of the CJNG and other violent Mexican cartels. A ban would give the cartels virtual control of another lucrative commodity across America’s southern border. This will create an unprecedented windfall for the CJNG and their rival cartels. The resulting profits fund violent crime throughout Mexico, perpetuating a lawless culture.

With the next presidential election in the United States on the horizon, now is the time for an important discussion about smart policy. The president of the United States must understand that overzealous domestic policies have foreign implications, and bans on popular consumer products like menthol cigarettes can create adverse outcomes in both Mexico and the U.S.

I urge the Biden administration, members of the United States Congress, and candidates for president to work with Mexican authorities to understand what policies, such as a menthol cigarette ban, would impact both our countries. Instead of empowering Mexican cartels, we should be doing everything in our power to work collaboratively to stop the CJNG and other cartels from growing in power and influence.

Francisco Rivas is the General Director of the National Citizen Observatory of Security, Justice and Legality A.C. (ONC) and member of the National Security Council of Mexico/InsideSources