Having fallen just shy of victory in the first round of votes, the establishment favorite former Labor Secretary Tom Perez (and Obama/Clinton loyalist) has defeated Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) to become the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee in a blow to Bernie Sanders and the progressive wing of the party.
Vice President Biden and other key figures from the Obama administration supported Perez, who backed Hillary Clinton in the primary. Sanders and many of his allies backed Ellison, the first-ever Muslim elected to Congress and a star on the left. The party remains clearly divided...
...winning by 235 to 218 in the second round of voting (after failing to get the 213.5 votes required in the first round).
Perez: "We need a chair who can not only take the fight to Donald Trump" but "change the culture of the Democratic Party and the DNC"
Bernie Sanders congratulated former Perez on becoming the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, however warned that "the same old is not working."
"I congratulate Tom Perez on his election as chairman of the Democratic National Committee and look forward to working with him," Sanders said in a statement.
"At a time when Republicans control the White House, the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and two-thirds of all statehouses, it is imperative that Tom understands that the same-old, same-old is not working and that we must open the doors of the party to working people and young people in a way that has never been done before," the lawmaker added.
In his statement, Sanders maintained that it is time for the Democrats to "stand up to the 1 percent" and advance progressive values. "Now, more than ever, the Democratic Party must make it clear that it is prepared to stand up to the 1 percent and lead this country forward in the fight for social, racial, economic and environmental justice," he said.
To an extend siding the Sanders, the Republican National Committee also issued an official statement blasting Democrats for electing former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez as the new Democratic National Committee Head, calling him a "D.C. insider."
"The Democrat Party has lost touch with the American people. Voters spoke loud and clear last November that they wanted a change in Washington and to reverse the failed policies of the last eight years," the official statement from RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said. "President Trump and Republican representatives heard the voters' message loud and clear and now hold a historic number of offices across the country."
"By selecting a D.C. insider, Democrats only create deeper divisions within their own party by pushing a far left agenda that rejects a majority of their base outside Washington," the statement continued. "The DNC would be well-served to learn from two straight election cycle losses, encourage leaders in their party to listen to what the voters want and to get to work with Republicans to fix the mess they created."
As The Hill reports, the race to become the next Democratic Party leader split along establishment-grassroots lines and in many ways mirrored the divisive 2016 presidential primary between Sanders and Clinton.
The mainstream Democrats won out again.
Perez, the 55-year-old son of Dominican immigrants, becomes the party’s public face and chief spokesperson in charge of staking out Democratic opposition to President Trump.
Prior to serving as President Obama's Labor secretary, Perez was a civil rights attorney in the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder, who endorsed him in the chairmanship race.
He has almost no electoral experience, save for a successful bid for Montgomery County Council and a failed run at Maryland attorney general, in which he was disqualified over a technicality.
As chairman of the DNC, Perez inherits a monumental rebuilding project across the country after years of Democratic losses at every level of government.
And he will also have to go about the work of unifying a fractured party.
By way of background for how The Democrats got here, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald explains why the Obama White House recruited Perez to run against Ellison:
Members of the Democratic National Committee met today to choose their new chair, replacing the disgraced interim chair Donna Brazile, who replaced the disgraced five-year chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even though the outcome is extremely unlikely to change the (failed) fundamentals of the party, the race has become something of an impassioned proxy war replicating the 2016 primary fight: between the Clinton/Obama establishment wing (which largely backs Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who vehemently supported Clinton) and the insurgent Sanders wing (which backs Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress, who was an early Sanders supporter).
The New Republic’s Clio Chang has a great, detailed analysis of the contest. She asks the key question about Perez’s candidacy that has long hovered and yet has never been answered. As Chang correctly notes, supporters of Perez insist, not unreasonably, that he is materially indistinguishable from Ellison in terms of ideology (despite his support for TPP, seemingly grounded in loyalty to Obama). This, she argues, is “why the case for Tom Perez makes no sense”: After all, “if Perez is like Ellison — in both his politics and ideology — why bother fielding him in the first place?”
The timeline here is critical. Ellison announced his candidacy on November 15, armed with endorsements that spanned the range of the party: Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Raúl Grijalva, and various unions on the left, along with establishment stalwarts such as Chuck Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, and Harry Reid. He looked to be the clear frontrunner.
But as Ellison’s momentum built, the Obama White House worked to recruit Perez to run against Ellison. They succeeded, and Perez announced his candidacy on December 15 — a full month after Ellison announced. Why did the White House work to recruit someone to sink Ellison? If Perez and Ellison are so ideologically indistinguishable, why was it so important to the Obama circle — and the Clinton circle — to find someone capable of preventing Ellison’s election? What’s the rationale? None has ever been provided.
I can’t recommend Chang’s analysis highly enough on one key aspect of what motivated the recruitment of Perez: to ensure that the Democratic establishment maintains its fatal grip on the party and, in particular, to prevent Sanders followers from having any say in the party’s direction and identity:
There is one real difference between the two: Ellison has captured the support of the left wing. … It appears that the underlying reason some Democrats prefer Perez over Ellison has nothing to do with ideology, but rather his loyalty to the Obama wing. As the head of the DNC, Perez would allow that wing to retain more control, even if Obama-ites are loath to admit it. …
And it’s not just Obama- and Clinton-ites that could see some power slip away with an Ellison-headed DNC. Paid DNC consultants also have a vested interest in maintaining the DNC status quo. Nomiki Konst, who has extensively covered the nuts and bolts of the DNC race, asked Perez how he felt about conflicts of interest within the committee — specifically, DNC members who also have contracts with the committee. Perez dodged the issue, advocating for a “big tent.” In contrast, in a forum last month, Ellison firmly stated, “We are battling the consultant-ocracy.”
In other words, Perez, despite his progressive credentials, is viewed — with good reason — as a reliable functionary and trustworthy loyalist by those who have controlled the party and run it into the ground, whereas Ellison is viewed as an outsider who may not be as controllable and, worse, may lead the Sanders contingent to perceive that they have been integrated into and empowered within the party.
But there’s an uglier and tawdrier aspect to this. Just over two weeks after Ellison announced, the largest single funder of both the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign — the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban — launched an incredibly toxic attack on Ellison, designed to signal his veto. “He is clearly an anti-Semite and anti-Israel individual,” pronounced Saban about the African-American Muslim congressman, adding: “Keith Ellison would be a disaster for the relationship between the Jewish community and the Democratic Party.”
Saban has a long history not only of fanatical support for Israel — “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,” he told the New York Times in 2004 about himself — but also an ugly track record of animus toward Muslims. As The Forward gently put it, he is prone to “a bit of anti-Muslim bigotry,” including when he said Muslims deserve “more scrutiny” and “also called for profiling and broader surveillance.” In 2014, he teamed up with right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson to push a pro-Israel agenda. In that notorious NYT profile, he attacked the ACLU for opposing Bush/Cheney civil liberties assaults and said: “On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk.”
There’s no evidence that Saban’s attack on Ellison is what motivated the White House to recruit an opponent. But one would have to be indescribably naïve about the ways of Washington to believe that such a vicious denunciation by one of the party’s most influential billionaire funders had no effect at all.
The DNC headquarters was built with Saban’s largesse: He donated $7 million to build that building, and he previously served as chairman of the party’s capital-expenditure campaign. Here’s how Mother Jones’s Andy Kroll, in a November profile, described the influence Saban wields within elite Democratic circles:
No single political patron has done more for the Clintons over the span of their careers. In the past 20 years, Saban and his wife have donated $2.4 million to the Clintons’ various campaigns and at least $15 million to the Clinton Foundation, where Cheryl Saban serves as a board member. Haim Saban prides himself on his top-giver status: “If I’m not No. 1, I’m going to cut my balls off,” he once remarked on the eve of a Hillary fundraiser. The Sabans have given more than $10 million to Priorities USA, making them among the largest funders of the pro-Hillary super-PAC. In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, he vowed to spend “whatever it takes” to elect her. …
The ties go beyond money. The Clintons have flown on the Sabans’ private jet, stayed at their LA home, and vacationed at their Acapulco estate. The two families watched the 2004 election results together at the Clintons’ home, and Bill Clinton gave the final toast at one of Cheryl Saban’s birthday parties. Haim Saban is chummy enough with Hillary that he felt comfortable telling her that she sounded too shrill on the stump. “Why are you shouting all the time?” he says he told her. “It’s drilling a hole in my head.” Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks in October contain dozens of messages to, from, and referencing Saban. And they show that he has no qualms about pressing Clinton and her aides on her position toward Israel. “She needs to differentiate herself from Obama on Israel,” he wrote in June 2015 to Clinton’s top aides.
When Clinton, during the campaign, denounced the boycott movement devoted to defeating Israeli occupation, she did it in the form of public letter to Saban. To believe that Democrats assign no weight to Saban’s adamantly stated veto of Ellison is to believe in the tooth fairy.
Saban’s attack predictably spawned media reports that Jewish groups had grown “uncomfortable” with Ellison’s candidacy (the ADL pronounced his past criticisms of Israel “disqualifying”), while whispers arose that the last thing the Democratic Party needed to win back Rust Belt voters was a black Muslim as the face of the party (even though the Detroit-born Ellison himself is from the Rust Belt).
As both Chang and Vox’s Jeff Stein have argued, the fact that DNC chair is a largely functionary position, with little real power over party policy or messaging, is all the more reason to throw Sanders supporters a symbolic bone. If Democrats were smart, this would be the perfect opportunity to capture that energized left-wing movement without having to make any real concessions on what matters most to them: loyalty to their corporate donor base.
But it’s hard to conclude that a party that has navigated itself into such collapse, which deliberately and knowingly chose the weakest candidate, who managed to lose to Donald J. Trump, is one that is thinking wisely and strategically. As Chang persuasively argues, it seems Democratic leaders prioritize ensuring that the left has no influence in their party over strengthening itself to beat the Trump-led Republicans:
The same could be said of today’s battle over the DNC and the push to install a loyal technocrat like Perez. This reluctance to cede control comes despite the fact that Democrats have lost over 1,000 state legislature seats since 2009. There is no case for Perez that cannot be made for Ellison, while Ellison is able to energize progressives in ways that Perez cannot. The question that will be answered on Saturday is whether Democrats have more urgent priorities than denying power to the left.
That view, one must grant, is deeply cynical of Democratic leaders. But — besides fearing the wrath of Saban — what else can explain why they were so eager to recruit someone to block Keith Ellison?
If the plan to sink Ellison succeeds, the message that will be heard — fairly or not — is that the Democratic Party continues to venerate loyalty to its oligarchical donors above all else, and that preventing left-wing influence is a critical goal. In other words, the message will be that the party - which to date has refused to engage in any form of self-reckoning - is steadfastly committed to following exactly the same course, led by the same factions, that has ushered in such disaster.
* * *
In retrospect, the Obama/Clinton elites got their way again and one can hope that the angry crowds railing against Trump will see what just transpired and will look inward this time (not just outward).
Like winning gold at the special olympics.
AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING!!! NOT!!!
I was really hoping for Ellison. The muslim Jew hating radical asshole would have been much more entertaining to watch pilot the democrat bus straight off a cliff and land it in a flaming fireball. Killing all aboard but creating a great place to roast marshmellows too.
& here I thought that there were faggier fags... Guess I was wrong
I got an idea. We give the French Obama and we take Franciose Hollande for the Democratic presedential nominee.
Ha cha cha cha
Feel the bern, Bern?
Sooooo, this guy is NOT a progressive? Whatever you say Dims, whatever you say.
There is literally no way to lose this if you are a Trump fan. Perez wins and disenfranchised the Berners. Ellison wins and the semi-conservatives are disenfranchised.
The winning is so bright, it burns!!
He has hot dog pizza map on a paper napkin written all over his slimy face.
Either way, the Dems are basically positioning their party .. as the party of ... RACE WAR!
Yeah, Perez is going to keep more of Soros money in the mix. The Dems will be harder to beat with that. But still beatable if Trump manages to clean up the city voting.
Bullshit, Soros, Rothschild and Bloomfuck money was always going to stay and prob increase no matter what....u actually think theyncare about the candidates? Called empty suits for a reason....onlynthing missing is Soros,hand up their ass moving their mouth at press conferences
Short bus special school hockey helmet wearer wins. Yay.
Republicans for 20 more years. Thanks, Dumbocraps.
"Perez: "We need a chair who can change the culture of the Democratic Party and the DNC"
Yeah, and they'll definitely get that, by installing another crooked crony.
More of the same, but this time will be different, eh Dems?
This Pererz guy seems like a marginally competent to incompetent puppet stooge the party establishment can control. A ZERO: a minor character, no election experience, no real personal political pull with the big money men of the pary; everthing he does will be funneled through the same old guard that fucked up the Dems to begin with. So, no real change, and no innovative strategy that's likely to be a threat. Same ol' same ol' no one wants. Just more stale Trump-bashing and whining on behalf of the MSM's alienation from the admin, all of which the public is becoming desensitized to and will likely tune out.
Bottom line: another worthless crooked stooge crony. Things stay disfunctional in the Democratic party. They got NOTHIN".
There ain't a closet in the world big enough to hide the Clinton skeletons Tommy boy. I hope you know that.
+100
King Shit of Turd Hill
nice avatar you got there
Why do we still call then Democrats?
Makes more sense to call then The Opposition since that is all they do.
LOL They just keep losing don't they?
Dang :-(
What am I going to do with all of these "I'm with Keith" tee shirts now?
With the Democrats completely in charge, you can be certain that it was a fair and honest election.
I was hoping for Ellison, who would've proved to be a major liability for the Demstruators.
MOAR Superdelegates, Bitchez!
Guess this means there's a schism in the Democratic Party.
Methinks with all the fake news and trashed ratings, the Tylers would be able to get the funding and licenses quite easily to start ZHTV...
Like Obama pissing away billions on windmill companies to foster competition, President Trump would probably be happy to do the same for new media.
You don't need a license to start a cable channel.
Demstruators.
hahahaha
X
Looney cats .... these are bottom feeders .... this is the muck that needs to be raked .... inflamed morons ?
Isn't Perez the guy Obama chose to de-crackerize the white suburbs? he was Hillary #1 choice for HUD to move Section 8 'ers into wealthy white suburbs because Soweeto said repeatedly, those suburbs are too white.
Pretty incredible how raycist Soweeto and his wookie are.
I am 100% sure the North Shore, Cape Snod, Arlington, Malibu, and parts of SF would be exempt.
You are quite correct. The previous DNC Chair was Debbie Wasserman-Schultz who said after 2nd Amendment folks kicked out some of her favorites in recall elections in Colorado for these gun grabbers, she said that DEMOGRAPHIC changes would, in the future, make that impossible. The really scary thing is SHE IS RIGHT.
Jews and Jewish organizations lead the gun control campaign by Professor Kevin MacDonald
So whether the Latino or the black Muslim or a Wasserman-Schultz is in charge, LONG TERM, the demographic change in America favors the Demonrats.
Professor Kevin MacDonald’s ‘The Culture of Critique’ Reviewed
What the Dems hate is that Trump is doing some demographic engineering of his own, kicking out fake voters and/or forcing them "into the shadows".
That's why the Dems are fighting so fiercely, as Ann Coulter said in a recen tinterview with Tucker Carlson. Soweeto/Hillary/soros, etc figured on the Dems controlling America forever after Hitlery won and they legalized all the illegal immigrants. It's estimated 80% of the illegals-turned voters would vote Dem so they would basically have a dictatorship forever over this country.
Trump's victory by a landslide is a yuuuge blow to these subversives.
DEMOGRAPHIC changes would, in the future, make that impossible. The really scary thing is SHE IS RIGHT.
But the deep state and their useful liberal idiots have written a new rule: political outcomes no longer need be complied with.
I'm black and live in one of those white suburbs. Let's keep it that way!
I'm black and live in one of those white suburbs. Let's keep it that way!
To be frank, it's not a skin color thing.
It's a culture and mentality thing.
A pity that so many Blacks identify themselves by their color, and then not expect to be treated that way. If all people - regardless of color or background - acted and talked like normal, decent and honorable people, then racism would just evaporate. Well, mostly.
It's funny, because so many here don't take me seriously, I have the perfect cover to tell people what I really think. Oh, it feels so good to do that - unencumbered by political and financial interests. I find alcohol and sex to be liberating also. Both let out the inner Freshman.
Yes Perez is one nasty dude. Ellison is more likable in front of a crowd.
Perez 1st motion was to select Keith Ellison as the Deputy Chairman of the Democrat COMMIE KKK party.
All is well.
Bernie Sanders needs to run as an Independent which is what he is, and is in Congress. He would of received more votes than Hillary Clinton, and would have been beaten Trump, without DNC money or support. Sanders needs to stand up and be a man, quit begging for the DNC money and support, he doesn't need it, and he'll never get it because it's run by the oligarchs. Just like Jesse Ventura won in Minnesota, Sanders can win on his own. Trump showed you can win without having the most campaign money.
The only thing Bernie can win on his own is "Most Beautiful Socialist in Vermont".
That ship has sailed for Sanders. Everyone knows he was controlled opposition for Clinton and a turncoat.
No, as Trump and Sanders both know, you cannot win the presidency without being the D or R nominee. That's why Trump decided he was a Republican, when he's really more of an independent himself.
No. Trump was a Republican. Reagan is his hero, among others.
Reagan was a democrat originally. He became a republican by default, when the democrats gave up the idea of following the wishes of the American public (that "of the people" thing is SO18th century quaint..) and to direct them toward the socialist ideal instead (for their own good, of course..).
It's hard to split a 3-way plurality and succeed with only 22% of the vote. Not even democrat math can make those numbers work to win.
However, Bernie proved that the Perot effect wasn't a one-off.. you can take 22% of the vote away and achieve a moral victory, and then defend in incessant debate with the 1st loser for years, while someone else runs the country.
Breathe in, breathe out. It does not make it any easier, but it does give you something else to think about.
Sounds like the Dems should just make "disgraced" a part of the official job title:
"Tom Perez elected as Disgraced Chairman of the DNC"
Perez' call to the Democrats will be "hard to port, left turn, more to the left, more left, go left, left." More of the same, will get you more of the same.
It's the only thing left for them to do.