politics

The Democratic Party is not a serious party. Both the party elite and the die-hard supporters need to wake the fuck up.

Days after President Donald Trump took office for the second time, a boatload of candidates vying to lead the Democratic National Committee crammed into a Washington auditorium plastered with MSNBC logos.

This was their last big forum before the vote to make the case that they had what it took to rescue their party from irrelevance.

The moderators called on a little-known contender, Quintessa Hathaway, to deliver the first opening statement. “I just want to give you all a little bit of something that’s been on my heart,” she told the audience.

Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, she broke into song. “When your government is doing you wrong,” she belted out, “you fight on, oh-oh, you fight on.”

It had only taken four minutes for the battle over the future of the Democratic Party to devolve into what critics likened to a scene from Portlandia, a comedy satirizing ultra-liberals — and it was a punchline that was clipped and replayed across social media in the days ahead. Things only got more surreal, and viral, from there. [...]

“How many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris’ defeat?” asked MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart. Every candidate raised their hand. “That’s good,” he added. “You all pass.” Later, a DNC member asked, in reference to party positions: “Will you pledge to appoint more than one transgender person to an at-large seat?” Only one of eight contenders kept their hand down. [...]

In multiple surveys since the election, a plurality of Democratic voters has said that Harris should be the 2028 presidential nominee. [...]

Progressives calling for a more leftward tack on economics haven’t gotten a much better reception. Faiz Shakir, the former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 bid, has said that Democrats should adopt a muscular economic populist agenda to win back working-class voters. When he ran for DNC chair on that platform, he only won two votes. [...]

David Shor, an influential liberal pollster, has been circulating a presentation to Democrats dissecting the 2024 election. Slide after slide paints a dire picture for the party: Young voters have become more Republican. Trump likely won foreign-born voters. The electorate trusts the GOP more than Democrats on Social Security. Higher turnout wouldn’t have saved Harris; in fact, it would have made Trump win by a larger margin. [...]

But intraparty critics said Democrats’ near-certain belief that they are going to take back the House in the midterms is also enabling them to continue avoiding hard conversations and perhaps obscuring the need to have a reckoning. There’s still a pervasive sense among some in the party that they don’t need to bother with all that — the pendulum will swing their way regardless.