The albatrosses around their necks have been cast off. Now what?

Last night, two prominent labor union leaders abruptly departed the posts that they apparently occupied at the Democratic National Committee — a fact rarely included in the many stories detailing their respective influence over the Democratic Party over the years.

In quick succession, Lee Saunders, head of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Randi Weingarten, the longtime leader of the American Federation of Teachers, took their ball and went home. Their respective statements announcing their departures read like declarations of surrender.

“These are new times. They demand new strategies, new thinking, and a renewed way of fighting for the values we hold dear,” Saunders wrote. “We must evolve to meet the urgency of this moment.” In contrast to Saunders’s exhausted determination, Weingarten sounded accusatory and self-pitying notes. “I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging,” her message to DNC chairman Ken Martin read, “and I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities.”

This would be a good opportunity for either Weingarten or, preferably, Martin himself to elucidate the ways in which these union officials fell “out of step” with the current leadership at the DNC.

Was it the degree to which the party allowed Weingarten to dictate Covid-era educational policy — where there was in-person education at all, despite her lobbying against it — leaving behind a legacy of mistrust in the public school system and persistent learning loss? Was it AFSCME’s lobbying in favor of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s vice presidential bid, helping saddle the party with not one but two impressively maladroit campaigners at the top of the ticket? Was it the extent to which both figures eagerly engaged in cultural battles that favored conservatives well outside their respective remits as labor leaders, alienating the public and muscling the Democratic Party into adopting progressive shibboleths whose constituencies are exclusive to college campuses?

Only a few short months ago, Weingarten and Saunders both enjoyed plum speaking spots on the stage at the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating convention. There, along with ridiculous figures like the National Education Association’s Becky Pringle, these labor officials presented a united front against Donald Trump’s GOP. Today, they are defenestrated — either by their own hands or Martin’s. Why?

We will learn soon enough. In the meantime, however, the diminutive DNC chair would be well advised to take credit for his recent successes — whether they’re his or not. It’s unlikely that a figure who confessed that he was nearly moved to frustrated tears by the likes of David Hogg has engineered this purge, but he nevertheless stands victorious. His enemies — Hogg, Weingarten, Saunders — are driven before him. He bestrides the party victorious, liberated from the activist class that believes the party’s best path to power involves catering to the vanguard of a progressive revolution no one wants.

Whether he made this moment happen or it just fell into his lap, Martin should take the reins. The albatrosses around their necks have been cast off. Now what?