Pay Attention! We’re About to Decide Whether the Democratic Party Lives or Dies

The Democratic National Committee is electing a new chair — and the consequences couldn’t be more dire

by ANDREW DOBBS

From Feb. 23 to 26, 2017, the Democratic National Committee will elect a new chair, one of the most consequential votes in the party’s history.

While there are no fewer than 10 people vying for the position, the contest is seen as a heads-up race between Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez.

The race is also considered a choice between the party’s establishment — largely backing Perez — and progressive grassroots activists, especially those who lined up behind Bernie Sanders in last year’s presidential race — all of them now behind Ellison.

Bernie’s political movement has coalesced around several nascent or revitalized institutions, especially the Our Revolution national political network and the Democratic Socialists of America. As millions of Americans have been looking for a way to plug into progressive political efforts in the wake of Pres. Donald Trump’s ascension these organizations have experienced explosive growth.

DSA and Our Revolution, however, have one foot out of the door of the Democratic Party. If Ellison is elected they will likely work with the Democrats, but if Perez wins there will be strong incentive to bolt.

This race gives new insights into the profound crisis facing the party — ending Trump’s regime is the primary political demand of the moment, but the Democratic Party can’t accomplish this straightforward task because it won’t surrender its allegiance to the very forces that created him.

The choice between Ellison and Perez will determine whether they seek to solve this crisis or deepen it, but what’s best for the movement may not be what it seems.

Political splits like this are always rooted in different sets of material interests, and they express themselves in different answers to basic questions. The basic question at the root of the DNC chair race is — “What responsibility does the Democratic Party bear for Trump’s election?”

If the Democratic Party is centrally responsible for Trump then there are fundamental problems at the heart of the party that need to be addressed in an emergency fashion. If other forces external to the party are to blame then the Democrats can remain basically the same with just some strategic shifts needed to get things back to normal.

Concretely, this is about who has what power. If the party is fine and doesn’t need radical change then the people who have always had power in it should retain their power. If the party has problems at its core then the people running it to date need to be replaced with new people and political elements.

Ellison’s faction, of course, takes the latter position. The party bears a fundamental responsibility for Trump’s election by putting too much power in the hands of corporate-friendly moderates out of touch with both the suffering of the U.S. masses. The solution is to ditch the party’s current ruling class and re-establish roots in the progressive grassroots.

Perez’s side takes the other stance. The Democrats made mistakes for sure, but the real solution is to improve the party’s “messaging” and to better market the same group of leaders. This is why Perez received the support of Joe Biden, Virginia governor and former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe and most of the Obama cabinet members that have bothered to endorse in the race.

But the powerful individuals really in question are the unaccountable class of elite political consultants that have gotten filthy rich off of the party and controlled its decision-making in the era of recent hack leaders such as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and McAuliffe.

Perez is very much the preferred candidate of these operatives, which helps to explain the nature of the divide. If you make your money developing propaganda for the party then your interest is in convincing them that they need to spend more money on more and better propaganda — it’s a problem of “messaging.”

You certainly don’t want your main sales leads in the party structure getting the heave ho, so you likewise have an interest in keeping the party’s ruling class intact.