I don’t have strong opinions on who should head the Democratic National Committee. From what I’ve seen of him, I like Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota. I believe I even did some work with his staff when I was consulting for Democracy for America. The opposition file dump on him just came out, and it’s substantial. I don’t know if the party wants that kind of headache, but I think it really comes down to whether Ellison would be good at the job.
On that score, my concern is that he’s a full-time congressman, and that doesn’t leave enough time for another full-time job. He could have the greatest ideas in the world, but I’m skeptical that he’d be able to devote enough attention to heading the DNC.
I saw that Markos Moulitsas endorsed NARAL’s Ilyse Hogue. I agreed with a lot of his reasoning, although I don’t really care all that much that she has a background in the Netroots. It’s nice, but her ideas are more important.
Howard Dean is an interesting case because he doesn’t fit neatly into any particular camp. It’s telling that Markos, who actually worked for Dean in 2004, didn’t even devote time to making a case against him. Dean is not a clear favorite of the establishment of the party, and Chuck Schumer endorsed Ellison which tells you that he and Dean are still on the outs. This shows that the old Emanuel/Schumer war with Dean may always have been more personal than ideological, as Ellison is clearly as progressive as anyone under consideration.
Yet, despite Dean lacking support from quarters where you might expect it, it’s widely conceded that he was an effective chairman of the DNC. He did a good job before, so why couldn’t he do a good job again?
There’s probably a temptation to worry about the racial/religious/gender identity of the chairman since they will be an important symbol of the party. I don’t care about that very much. I think the most important thing is that they have good ideas and management skills and that they can devote all their energies to the job.
None of these candidates appear to me to be miracle workers, and none of them strike me as clear disasters. So, I guess I just don’t care very much who gets the job.
I care more about the DCCC, but that will remain the same dude, Pelosi’s pick. Recruiting more self-funding quasi-or former-Republicans. The self-funding is an important feature, it seems.
Money is speech, is it not? Isn’t that the law of the land?
And before that it was still power.
I think you need to think about how you fund candidates if you don’t want self-funders.
The Blue Dog model was to be a budget hawk and work on getting the support of big employers. It worked while it worked. But it’s not the only possible model, and it’s not going to work anymore in any case.
yep. Big employers killed their economy with austerity.
I think you need to think about how you fund candidates if you don’t want self-funders.
How did that work for your district? Wasn’t Parrish supposed to self-fund? I didn’t see one ad, on TV or online, from him. Costello ran a few brutal attack ads on him anyway. Kind of funny since both voted for Willard in 2012.
I agee, It is a full time job and needs a full time person
RNC always has a full time person
RNC always has a full time person
That’s wrong. You forget Mel Martinez, for one. He was the one before Michael Steele, I think. Martinez was a Senator at the time he was RNC chair.
It’s a non-issue, concern trolling from his opponents, namely Clinton stalwarts.
Being a congresswoman doesn’t seem to have hampered Debbie Wasserman-Schultz from running the DNC exactly the way she was expected to.
Now all of a sudden, the very people who supported DWS are “worried” that poor Ellison would have too much on his plate.
I can’t address the issue of time between two full time jobs. But, I honestly cannot think of how the gender/race of the DNC chairman could make that much of a difference to most of the voters or to the actual nuts and bolts of the position. Ellison being black and muslim would give him insights into the minority base of the Democrats that Dean could not possibly have. Just as obviously, the Head of DNC is not exactly a springboard to peace and freedom for the western world.
Dean did a good job last time he was chair. I’d like to see an expanded election map similar to Dean’s 50 state strategy. This doesn’t mean that Ellison couldn’t be just as effective (possibly more effective if my discounting of race and religion is wrong). Its not like Howard Dean is the only person who can implement it. He’s just the only one who has tried and semi-succeeded.
It makes an enormous difference — like the gender of the Chair of the Fed did — to the true base of the Democratic party, to wit, commenters on blogs, many of whom aren’t Democrats to begin with.
I’d like to Ellison as Chair but then someone who actually believe in the 50 state strategy (which we have lacked since Obama took office) as a kind of field chair working on the nuts and bolts, so split the responsibilities.
As for the oppo file, I basically laugh. He’s shown over the last decade who he is and some of the points brought up there are actually real albeit over the top.
Israel really IS an apartheid regime (and lets face facts, it’s the people not just the government now) who continues to oppress the Palestinians in ways that actually sometimes DO resemble what the Nazis did.
Also Dean might work as that field chair.
But whatever Kos says matters for shit. Kos cares about money and that’s it. His actions over and over have shown it.
What makes you think Ellison doesn’t believe in the 50-state strategy?
Ellison is a Sanders supporter, and the 50-state strategy is very important to Sanders, as he very clearly demonstrated in his campaign.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/28/sanders-calls-50-state-strategy-revitalize-american-demo
cracy
I don’t mean to detract from Dean’s past and possibly future contribution, but I have no doubt that Ellison will have a 50-state strategy.
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I keep coming back to the fact that we are talking about the chair of the Democratic National Committee, which in normal organizations would be a policy committee, not an operations center. They should reflect the consensus of the Democratic base collectively, and the chair should guide the process for holding that consensus effectively to bring party victory. It is a process-protecting mission.
In principle, the executive director of the DNC should be the field chair. And that’s where Howard Dean would fit best, recommending to the Committee the practical steps that the staff and field staff can accomplish and the budget required to accomplish it and supervising the field staff in getting it done.
Are Ellison and Dean mature enough to work together in a time of crisis for the party to deal with that crisis or are they too ambitious to do that?
Ilyse Hogue has some role in this too as the 2016 election was a massive reversal of her organizations’ agendas (all of those on her resume).
Can we possibly get all of them and Deborah Ross of NC as well fitted into a workable reorganization of the DNC?
Like others, I see the Congressional leadership as a mess and the DSCC and DCCC as essentiallly lost causes from the beginning unless there is some dramatic change. And a move to the “center” is not that change.
Dean is worthless now. He decided to cash in on the lobbying train. We should be able to get others to implement the same kind of ideas(see 50 state strategy) that he had.
I don’t know that he’d want to be demoted to “staff” now.
As I point out up-thread, I’m confident the 50-state strategy is in good hands with Ellison.
The party is badly split and people seem to want to pretend it is not.
I am not in the same wing of the party as Markos and probably not Booman.
I want to build a party based on small donations, and grass roots activism.
The only way build in that way is to adopt a clear message. One that draws heavily from Bernie’s campaign, but can appeal to the POC.
This is the weakness with my wing of the party – our ability to appeal to POC.
I think that means we need Ellison.
Given the volume of typos that result when I use my phone I am hereby instituting a lifetime ban on using it to comment here.
God…
Any thoughts on Jaime Harrison?
More people should be focused on this part of the equation.
digby repeatedly highlighted his full-page ad in NYT (or was it Daily News?) back when, attacking the young, black males wrongly accused, tried, and convicted in the “Central Park jogger” case.
Then another after they’d been exonerated by DNFuckingA evidence, protesting the City’s settlement with them (~$40M iirc) for the many years of their lives stolen by wrongful incarceration, and continuing to imply they were guilty anyway.
(But then Clinton once said “predators”, so both sides dontchaknow?)