“This is a new Democratic Party. We’re taking the gloves off,” warned new Democratic National Committee Ken Martin this weekend, suggesting that the Democratic party’s deeply disappointing 2024 results were because the party simply hadn’t opposed Donald Trump enough.
A solid majority of the 448 members of the Democratic National Committee elected Martin, the former head of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, to lead them in the second term of Trump. The Democrats also elected 24-year-old David Hogg – yes, that David Hogg – to be one of their three vice chairs.
There are few people more insulated from the consequences of national election wipeouts than the members of the national party committees. After all, for the elected officials in their ranks, these are the lawmakers who won reelection and kept their jobs. Most of them are state party chairs and presidents of Democratic organizations, who never have to face the public in a general election.
The national party members who elect the chairman are the state party chairs, “the chairperson and the highest-ranking officer of another gender of each recognized state Democratic Party and of the Democratic Parties of Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.” (Hmm, could that be read as the Democratic Party’s charter acting like there are only two genders?)
The Democratic Leader in the United States Senate and the Democratic Leader in the United States House of Representatives “and one additional member of each body, who shall be of another gender of, and appointed by, the respective leaders.”
DNC membership is also extended to whoever is running the “Democratic Governors’ Association and two additional governors, of whom, at least one shall be of another gender of the Chairperson” and the same deal is in effect for the Democratic Mayors Association, Young Democrats of America, National Democratic County Officials, Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Democratic Municipal Officials, National Federation of Democratic Women, College Democrats of America, Democratic State Treasurers Association, Democratic Attorneys General Association, National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee, National Democratic Seniors Coordinating Council, High School Democrats of America, and Democrats Abroad.
In other words, the people who get to vote on the DNC chairman are the people who are currently running the various other appendages of the Democratic Party. And unsurprisingly, none of them wanted to vote for a candidate for chairman whose primary message was, “we screwed up royally, and we stink, and we have to go back to the drawing board.”
No they preferred Martin, with his generic declaration that “it’s time to get off the mat, to dust ourselves off and to get back in this fight.”
It’s been a long while since a party chairman seemed like a big-time voice in the Democratic party. Maybe Howard Dean? Ed Rendell?
How often did you see or hear from Jaime Harrison in the past four years? A national party chairman is always lower profile when his party controls the White House, but Harrison might as well have been in the witness protection program. He started with Democratic control of the White House, Senate, and House, and ended his time with the GOP controlling all three. In the past two years, the DNC raised $652 million dollars. Much like with the Harris campaign, Democratic party donors can fairly ask, why didn’t all that money turn into more votes?
The job of a party chairman is to raise money – and conversely, not waste money – recruit candidates, and then, thirdly, be an effective spokesman/surrogate/talking head for the party. Time will tell if Martin’s any better at these tasks than Harrison was.
Meanwhile, David Hogg is likely to keep doing what he’s best at, insisting that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s right to own a firearm, arguing that the National Rifle Association is a terrorist organization, and making ill-informed and hard left controversial statements on social media.