Two radical leftists who could help keep Democrats out of power for generations.

Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez appears to be gaining on Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota in the increasingly fractious race for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

That things are bad out there for Democrats is part of South Carolina party chairman Jaime Harrison’s stump speech. “We like to say, if Jesus Christ came back and ran in some of these districts as a Democrat, he couldn’t win.”

The jihad-friendly Ellison is still considered to be the frontrunner over Perez who joined the chaotic contest in December, the month after Ellison launched his own campaign to become the public face of the Democratic Party. Ellison is reportedly leading Perez and all the other DNC candidates in fundraising. The 447-member DNC is scheduled to choose its next chairman Feb. 23 in Atlanta.

The travelling freak show that is the DNC’s caravan of candidate forums is part of the ongoing meltdown among Democrats in deep denial that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Democrats are doubling down on the rampant anti-white racism and identity politics that marked the past eight years of incessant race-baiting and guilt-tripping by former President Obama.

The DNC doesn’t support free speech. DNC chairman candidate Vincent Tolliver was kicked out of the race by interim DNC chairman Donna Brazile for speaking truth to power regarding Islam. He got into hot water at a candidates’ forum on Saturday for saying Ellison should not become DNC chief because he is “a Muslim” and “being gay is a direct violation” of Islamic law. “In some Muslim countries being gay is a crime punishable by death.” Brazile said the comments were “disgusting.” Tolliver told Breitbart News he intends to sue over this “violation of my First Amendment right.”

From conservatives’ point of view the race between the two leading candidates could be likened to Operation Barbarossa: both sides represent abhorrent ideologies that aim to strangle freedom. Both Ellison and Perez are proudly, fiercely radical, race-baiting, class-warfare-loving, community-organizing lawyers owned by the labor unions.

Both are onboard with the DNC, which officially endorses the racist, terroristic Black Lives Matter movement whose paranoid radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and brutality against black suspects. In 2015 the DNC, the party’s governing body, adopted a resolution accusing American police of “extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.” In a recent candidates’ forum, Ellison said would-be murderer Trayvon Martin had been “executed.”

Perez, the outspoken champion of illegal aliens, comes across in speeches as more sophisticated and articulate – and at least superficially reasonable – compared to Ellison. Ellison, with his ties to the Nation of Islam and other fringe groups, is significantly more abrasive, in-your-face, and arguably threatening in the eyes of the average voter. Both have close ties to the HAMAS front group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Endorsements have been stacking up for the two candidates.

Perez has been endorsed by Rep. Filemon Vela Jr. (Texas) along with four governors – former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe (Virginia), John Hickenlooper (Colorado), Gina Raimondo (Rhode Island), and John Bel Edwards (Louisiana). The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, United Farm Workers, International Association of Fire Fighters, and the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry also support Perez.

Ellison has been endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York), Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Reps. John Lewis (Georgia) and Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. The AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Communications Workers of America, and UNITE HERE also back Ellison.

Ellison said he would resign his congressional seat if he wins the DNC race to focus full-time on party business.

The congressman’s campaign suffered a major setback on Feb. 1 when former Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Perez.

According to Daniel Strauss of Politico, the endorsement, “Biden’s first political act since leaving office,” is “the most public sign yet that Perez has the backing of the highest ranking members of the Obama administration.”

“I’ve known Tom Perez for a long time,” Biden said in a press release last week.

He’s a man of integrity and vision and he knows what it means to be a Democrat—that we are a party that fights for economic fairness for working families and believes that everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity, regardless of who they are, where they come from, or who they love.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the self-described socialist whose insurgent presidential campaign was sabotaged by Hillary Clinton loyalists in the DNC, promptly slammed Biden, calling his endorsement another example of the “failed status-quo approach,” Warner Todd Huston reported at Breitbart News.

On Facebook Sanders wrote:

Joe Biden is a friend of mine and I have a lot of respect for Tom Perez. In terms of the next chair of the DNC, however, the question is simple. Do we stay with a failed status-quo approach or do we go forward with a fundamental restructuring of the Democratic Party? I say we go forward and create a grassroots party which speaks for working people and is prepared to stand up to the top 1 percent. That’s why we have to support Keith Ellison.

Some Democrats are furious at Sanders because he’s not even a member of their party. He briefly changed his party affiliation to Democrat last year and then changed it back to Independent after Clinton won the party’s nomination. In the U.S. Senate he caucuses with the Democrats, which means he gets to enjoy the trappings of being associated with a major party without actually being part of it.

The divisive rhetoric used by Sanders flies in the face of Ellison’s messaging which stresses party unity. Democrats are offended.

“It is very concerning that Bernie Sanders is so intent on taking over a party that he’s not even a member of — that he’d insult the beloved vice president — and really the president — about a failed status quo approach,” said Texas Democratic chairman Gilberto Hinojosa

Hinojosa continued:

We lost an election and all of a sudden we’re all a part of a failed status quo? When he puts Joe Biden and Tom Perez in this category and paints with a broad brush he insults all of us. This is an election between loyal, qualified Democrats who love our party and the country. There’s no need for him to lower himself to that level.

Sanders “doesn’t get to set the standard for a party he’s not a member of,” said party strategist Jamal Simmons.

Other Democrats reportedly hit Sanders for his “egoism” and willingness to exploit bad blood from the primary race.

“He’s opening these old wounds and it looks to me also like his ego is at play,” one Clinton ally reportedly complained. “Perez and Ellison are cut from the same progressive cloth. Either one would be a strong leader.”

While Ellison, whose adventures have been exhaustively documented by FrontPage, is mostly known as a loud rabble-rouser, Perez is known for using his organizing talents to advance the Obama agenda from inside federal agencies.

Perez is a longtime illegal alien enabler. He is a past president of Casa de Maryland, an advocacy group for illegals funded by George Soros and the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

A former top aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Perez became labor secretary in July 2013 after barely surviving a confirmation vote in the Senate. Before that he served as U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights presiding over the ridiculously race-obsessed Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. Like Barack Obama, Perez graduated from Harvard Law School.

Under Perez, the Department of Justice refused to prosecute hate crimes committed against white Americans. He was reportedly instrumental in the Justice Department’s dismissal – over the objections of the government attorneys handling the matter – of a case involving two New Black Panther Party members who brandished weapons and intimidated white voters in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008. An inspector general found that Perez believed voter protection statutes “did not cover white citizens.” He targeted former Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio ® for legal harassment because he didn’t like Arpaio’s tough-on-crime approach, especially with respect to illegal aliens.

During his time at the Department of Justice, members of the Civil Rights Division he oversaw collaborated with ACORN-affiliated Project Vote to weaken electoral integrity-related law enforcement. Voter ID laws, in his twisted view, are racist, calculated to deprive minorities of their voting rights.

Perez’s refusal to disavow Saudi-style anti-blasphemy laws shocked Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee’s panel on the Constitution in 2012.

“Will you tell us … that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?” Franks asked four times to no avail.

Perez believes that America is a seething hotbed of “Islamophobia,” filled with ignorant racist rubes who irrationally fear Islam. He has worked with hardcore Islamist groups such as the terrorist-linked Islamic Society of North America and applauded Islamists for lobbying against airline security measures.

Perez believes the government should require racial discrimination in order to benefit those the Left deems to have been historically oppressed. He favors the use of affirmative action in hiring at higher education and healthcare facilities. He believes medical schools should lower admission standards for black applicants.

He played a major role in enacting the Church Arson Prevention Act, legislation based on the false premise that black churches were being targeted with disproportionate frequency by arsonists.

Perez openly holds business people in contempt, treating them as morally inferior. He likens bankers to Ku Klux Klan members. The only difference between bankers and Klansmen is that bankers discriminate “with a smile” and “fine print,” but they are “every bit as destructive as the cross burned in the neighborhood,” he has said.

Perez demanded at a DNC candidate forum that more Latino police officers work in Latino neighborhoods. “How can you help the Latino community when you don’t have Latino officers?” he said. “Kind of hard to communicate in my experience.”

“That’s why we need a police force, law enforcement, that reflects the community,” Perez said. “That is why we need a business community that reflects America.”

Finally, Perez has said the “civil rights movement and the labor movement are … essentially the same.”

So the distinctions between Perez and Ellison on policy are miniscule but in terms of style they are vast.

It’s hard to say which man would hurt the Democrats’ already failing brand more.

But from conservatives’ perspective, what difference does it make?