The Democratic Party is in crisis, hollowed out at the state level, and desperate for new ideas, bold leaders and a cutting-edge plan of action against Donald Trump.

The race for Democratic National Committee chair is bland and bloodless. The seven candidates are downplaying differences and offering conventional ideas they all agree on.


Go local. Pursue a new 50-state strategy. Something about cybersecurity. Organize. The list goes on, but the pitches share one thing in common: they’re not very complicated, imaginative or a break from the past.

In part that’s a reflection of the seriousness of the Democratic predicament, both as a political party and in its official institutional apparatus. “[U]ntil you get the basics right, innovation is sort of a luxury,” said Donnie Fowler, who ran for DNC chair in 2005 and has stayed involved, including as a consultant through the last few months of the 2016 cycle.

But the nothingness and me-too-ism of the race is also a reflection of a crowded field that’s short on star power and heavy on party mechanics.

The seven-candidate field, which shows no sign of winnowing, includes Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, New Hampshire party chair Ray Buckley, South Carolina party chair Jaime Harrison, Idaho party executive director Sally Boynton Brown and former Fox News analyst Jehmu Greene and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The fact that the DNC hasn’t had an open race for 12 years, and is busy trying to figure out its existing rules at the same time it works out its new identity isn’t helping either. There are just 447 people who’ll have a vote when they gather in Atlanta the last weekend in February, and though the race is being turned from the outside into a vehicle for the party’s rolling existential crisis, it’s still going to be decided by a collection of local chieftains with their own parochial interests and hands out for cash and attention — and that’s what the candidates have been catering too.

As they gather for yet another regional forum Saturday — this time, in Houston — Democrats are starting to get tired of chewing over the same boiled steaks.

Former labor secretary Tom Perez, right, hugs Rep. Keith Ellison during a DNC forum in Phoenix on Jan. 14. | AP Photo

“I want the candidates to be speaking larger, speaking bigger and recognizing that you can't just talk about 'We're going to be organizing, organizing, organizing,' because what does that mean?” said Susan Turnbull, former Maryland Democratic Party chairwoman and a former DNC vice chair and deputy chair. “How do you do that? If a woman in Hawaii can sit at her Facebook page and create a march for 3 million people, then the DNC just better figure out a better way to communicate.”

“This race has become boring, and there needs to be some pizzazz thrown into the selection of the DNC chair,” said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. “And that pizzaz should be a hardy debate and disagreements on the direction of the party and major issues. That hasn't happened.”

Don’t expect it to, said former Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who before she was in Barack Obama’s Cabinet, briefly gave Democrats hope that her elections as governor of Kansas might mean promising things for their prospects in the state.

The DNC chair race is “where do we go from here in terms of regrouping, resetting, energizing a younger generation of leaders to step up — and really focusing resources,” Sebelius said, “and to me, that discussion is really boring.”

The danger, though, is that whoever wins the DNC election is going to automatically become a major face of the party, and represent to many people a signal of the direction of the party, fair or not.

“The American public isn't going to vote on this. They aren't going to be involved and engaged,” Sebelius said, “but I think the DNC can either be irrelevant in the future or they can play a strategic role and that to me is what the discussion should be about.”

Christine Pelosi, a DNC member from California, blames the moderators at the debates so far whom she says haven’t forced any of the candidates to confront the really difficult questions about themselves or the future of the party.

“If we don't cringe now, we're going to keep losing,” she said.

The Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington, D.C. as seen on Aug. 26. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Some of that, Pelosi argued, needs to happen at DNC operations right now. What Democrats in Washington have been doing as they begin to grapple with Trump, in her view, hasn’t matched the level of outrage people in the party are feeling outside of the nation’s capital.

“The last question that they should all be asked” at the Houston forum, Pelosi said, is “why in the world did the DNC bother to pay for a war room to go after Trump's rigged cabinet if Democratic senators were going to do the rigging for him by voting for his nominees?”

A number of leading Democrats argue that what their party needs right now is the kind of low-wattage, but deep-in-the-muck leadership of the sort that Reince Priebus brought to the Republican National Committee in his nearly six years as chair — an emphasis on party building, data honing and centralized leadership which provided the backbone for Trump's win. With crucial 2018 midterms looming and a leaderless party already thinking forward to 2020, getting the DNC functional is one of the only ways the party can begin to prepare in any substantive way.

But to Fowler, it’s outside groups and operatives who are going to be the real engines for change, for a DNC that’s basically become a nexus of big donations and writing checks. “Innovation is happening, you’re just unlikely to see it in this DNC’s chair race,” he said.

The 447 voters in the race, he noted, “want the basics to be accomplished. They want the DNC to check the basic Campaign 101 boxes. When you combine that with the fact that the Democratic Party really needs to start with Campaign 101, it sort of makes sense this year.”

Former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said that what he’s seeing in the race so far is a very uncomfortable truth play out: the candidates running to lead the party are just as confused as everyone else about what to do in the face of a massive unexpected loss and Trump’s scrambling of politics.

“It’s going to be a while before people sort this out,” Doyle said, “and if you’re running for DNC you have to claim you have great answers, but you don’t.”

Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.