Tom Perez Won 1 Election in His Life But Wants to Run Thousands of Democratic Party Campaigns? pplswar Follow Feb 16, 2017 · 3 min read

For those who don’t know, Nomi Konst is an incredibly sharp and independent-minded journalist who does real-deal investigative journalism, not snarky fake news and not Twitter hot takes (although she is on Twitter and you should follow her). She used to her experience in official politics as a consultant to support Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary and has been following the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair fight very, very closely. She is the only pro-Sanders reporter who has attended all of the official and unofficial DNC forums. Below, she discusses where the race is at between the front-runners Tom Perez (establishment) and Keith Ellison (progressive).

Contrary to what Jacobin would have you believe, whether Perez or Ellison controls the apparatus of America’s second most powerful political party is a YOOJ deal!

Ellison’s victory would mean Sanders and his supporters lost the nomination battle but ultimately won the war by wresting the Democratic Party from the clutches of Wall Street, Corporate America, and the consultant class vampires who personally profit from the party’s severe dysfunction as Konst explains in the video.

With Ellison in command, the Democratic Party would be dominated by its ‘Berniecrat’ wing and the national political alternative to Trumpism offered up to voters would be progressive class-struggle politics rather than vapid bourgeois liberalism propped with identity politics and virtue signal-driven outrage.

Perez’s victory would be a major setback not just for Berniecrats but for Democrats of all stripes, even the corporatists. His victory would mark an extension of Debbie Wasserman Schulz’s corrupt and inept reign that literally destroyed the Democrat Party from top to bottom during 2011–2016 and gave the Republican Party unprecedented power.

Despite spending many years in government, the only time Perez has held elected office was during the four years he served on a county council in Maryland. He is a political neophyte with zero grassroots organizing experience and this makes him frankly unqualified for the position he seeks. A man who has won only 1 election in his entire life is not someone who can plan, run, and win literally thousands of local, state, and federal campaigns in 50 states and over 3,000 countries in this country.

Putting Perez in charge of the DNC is about as smart as putting Betsy Devos in charge of the Department of Education and look how well that worked out.

Ellison on the other hand has been engaged in political struggle for a lot longer and done so at the grassroots level. He has gone through some tough fights, including dealing with his association with the extremist and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam as a college student. Far from being a liability, this experience is an asset in the era of Citizens United and Trumpian fake news attacks.

If anyone is prepared to get the Democratic Party and its candidates ready to fight and win thousands of elections under Trump, it’s Ellison — not Perez.