By Norman Solomon / The Hill
The Democratic National Committee has just elected a new chair, but the old guard that has long dominated the party will not go quietly. Although there are some reasons for cautious optimism, the road ahead will be steeply uphill for the Democratic Party.
Ken Martin, longtime chair of the party in Minnesota, is replacing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, whose four-year term was marked by steady subservience to his patron, former President Joe Biden. Martin has the opportunity to be a leader instead of merely following self-focused directives from the president. It shouldn’t be difficult to improve on Harrison’s job performance.
The DNC headquarters has functioned as a fortress, notorious among grassroots party activists as an unwelcoming place. Martin might be inclined to change that.
Many top executives at the DNC do not like Martin. Given their hidebound behavior, it’s an indication that badly needed change might be in the offing. What’s more, it is encouraging that the new chair overcame the opposition of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who all publicly endorsed Ben Wikler, Martin’s main rival for the post.
The national party has remained in the grip of leaders who have never acknowledged their abject failure. That failure can be summed up in a notorious statement Schumer made a few months before Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
Rather than dissipate after Clinton’s shocking loss, this elitism lingered on and guided the strategy of former Vice President Kamala Harris eight years later. “The path to victory in a state like Michigan, Harris campaign officials are betting, is through suburban counties that are home to many college-educated and white voters,” the New York Times fatefully reported less than three weeks before the election.
Although countless party officials and pundits have scratched their heads over the drastic fall-off in working-class support for the 2024 Democratic ticket, the main reasons should not be mysterious. The faux populism of Trump’s Republican Party cannot be effectively countered by warmed-over liberal bromides and calls for incremental reform.
To shed its well-earned reputation for elitism, the DNC should stop running away from populism and instead embrace it — not by making peace with Trumpism, but by moving toward genuine progressive populism. That means showing that the party actually means business about siding with the interests of low- and middle-income Americans against the rapacious effects of unfettered corporate power — from systematic price gouging to regressive tax rates to runaway military spending — at the expense of programs that meet human needs.