The Democratic National Committee announced Monday it will elect a new chairman on February 1, just days after President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.
After Trump's resounding victory, the influential political establishment is faced with existential questions. One of the first among them is: "Who will lead it?", commented the Associated Press.
Incumbent National Committee chairman Jamie Harrison has made it clear he will not seek a second term, opening up a seat that must be filled by March 1, according to the party's bylaws. The figure who fills the post will say a lot about how the party wants to present itself going forward and what problems its members say have prevented Democrats from defeating Trump in 2024.
The new chairman will also lead the nominating process for the party's 2028 presidential nominee. Harrison has been criticized for endorsing President Joe Biden's bid for a second term, even as many Democratic voters questioned whether he should is running again, AP recalls.
The early debate over Harrison's replacement appears to be along a clear dividing line -- do Democrats need an operative with clear skills and experience in overhauling the party structure, or does the party need a good communicator who can answer whatever the Trump administration plans to do, and win voters over to the Democratic ideas they rejected at the polls.
„They need to find someone outside of Washington who understands local politics,” said Howard Dean, a former party chairman who took over after George W. Bush won a second term. “The Democratic National Committee is often a creature of Washington, which is a big problem. There should be a Committee that covers the whole country”, he added.
Leading Democratic Party figures are expected to discuss the situation after the election in Scottsdale, Arizona, in mid-December. It is already being speculated that among them will be serious candidates for the leadership position. The names of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, former Georgia House of Representatives representative Stacey Abrams, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have also been in the public domain. and Martin O'Malley - former governor of Maryland and current commissioner of the Social Security Administration USA.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is analyzing how the large-scale loss came about, which left the most important powers - the presidency, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court - under Republican control.
Political analysts, commentators and even voters tried to explain the Democrats' losses in both the executive and legislative branches by President Joe Biden staying in the race until July, Kamala Harris saying something wrong on the campaign trail or that the Democrats were too soft on Trump, writes the British newspaper "Independent".
Instead of continuing to make excuses for the election debacle, Congressman Adam Schiff said the Democratic Party lost because it failed to listen to voters, pointing to the publication and quoting Schiff on NBC, where he said: “I think the entire Democratic Party bears responsibility, including me”. The congressman said the country was facing “strong resentment against the sitting president” mainly due to economic issues. Given that Democrats currently hold the presidency and the Senate, that means people have rejected the “status quo;”, he noted.
„The Democratic Party needs to recognize the challenge we face -- that too many -- millions of voters, working people, don't think we represent them,” Schiff said.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat in a hotly contested race with Republican Bernie Moreno, echoed that sentiment when explaining why Democrats, including himself, lost a lot of votes. Brown told CNN that his party made a “mistake” of treating inflation as temporary and failing to attribute it to rising prices instead of flat wages. He explained that by failing to attract non-college and working-class voters, Democrats missed an opportunity to broaden their voter base. Ultimately, that hurt Harris' chances of winning the election, Brown noted.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said the Democratic Party has become “the party of identity politics” instead of focusing on working-class voters – who make up the majority of the people in the country. “Whether or not the Democratic Party has the ability, given who funds it and its reliance on well-paid consultants, whether it has the ability to transform remains to be seen,” Sanders told the "New York Times".
Democrats acknowledge that Biden launched a doomed campaign and stayed in the race even after facing public and personal pressure to drop out. His withdrawal in July left Harris with roughly four months to campaign, but it was largely based on policies similar to those of Biden – something most voters apparently rejected by the time she entered the race, the Independent noted.
Meanwhile, representatives of the Democratic Party in individual regions of the US have already begun to look for ways to return the formation to the political scene, writes "Politico".
In 27 interviews conducted in six states, party officials, union leaders and strategists acknowledged that Democrats need to win back the working-class voters, especially Hispanics and others without college degrees, who helped elect Trump.
„We need to strengthen our presence across the country - not just in key states, but we also need to strengthen the Democratic Party in states where it is less competitive than it should be,” said Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. His state remains solidly blue, but Trump has narrowed the gap there significantly this year compared to 2020.
Even in the traditional stronghold of the Democrats - New York, the president-elect narrowed the lead over their candidate compared to 2020. with 12 points.
Two Democrats who edged out Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania and New York urged their peers to focus on economic issues and border security concerns, which Republicans have effectively used to woo swing voters.
Congressman Chris DeLuzio, the only swing Democrat in Pennsylvania to retain his seat this year, did better than Harris in traditionally red Beaver County, particularly in old industrial towns.
„My region has a history of bad trade deals and policies that take away our jobs and scatter them across the planet. "Republicans are responsible for this, and some Democrats are too," he said. “And certainly the way I ran my campaign was to talk about those kinds of economic issues,” Deluzio explained.
In New York state's Hudson Valley, Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan easily won a second term, also focusing on issues of the economy and border security and quickly distancing himself after President Joe Biden's disastrous debate in June. After his victory, Ryan advised Democrats to calm the fears of working-class voters through messaging and legislative action.
„We need to figure out where this economic pressure is coming from, where this inequality is coming from, find the cause, and then work and fight against it to close that gap (with Republicans),” Ryan said recently before MSNBC.
East Coast union leaders are already planning to travel across the Midstate to talk to voters who have left their party in the Trump era, hoping to win them back before the 2026 midterm elections.
George Gresham, the black leader of a large and influential health care workers union in New York, plans to travel to the Appalachians and talk to Trump voters. His union includes politically engaged black women who make up the most reliable Democratic voters.
Tom Swasey, a congressman from Long Island, defeated his Republican opponent this year by focusing on the main issue - immigration. He has promised to tighten the southern border at a time when New York is the center of an influx of migrants competing with low-income residents for scarce housing and jobs.
And New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who easily defeated her GOP opponent, focused on the party's fundraising strength. After embarrassing losses in New York cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives two years ago, state party representatives and Gov. Cathy Hockle spent $5.7 million. dollars to help local candidates through an army of more than 23,000 volunteers reach six million voters, recalls "Politico".
Unlike Harris' failed bid for the White House, the victorious New York House Democrats were now talking tough on border security. But they also campaigned in support of longtime Democratic priorities like abortion rights and gun control.
„If you look at New York, it will be a model for what we want to do in 2026,” Gillibrand said. “We can use New York as a model for how to get into the red fortresses”, she emphasized.
Democrats plan to strengthen their organizations in places and in the most competitive regions of the country.
In Wisconsin, where Trump won by less than one percentage point after losing to Biden by a similar margin four years ago, Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wickler said he plans to “double and triple the organization in the state” and to “invent new ways and new places to communicate”. “Clearly, there are a lot of people who, even if they heard, didn't understand that the Democrats had a plan to cut prices,”, he said.
On the West Coast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special session of the Legislature to allocate more money to fund populist policies, from expanding access to school lunches to canceling medical debt, noted "Politico".
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Megan Meehan-Draper, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said state leaders will play a leading role in renewing the party.
„They are the best way forward because they are the ones focusing on issues like jobs, health care, public safety, public education, infrastructure,” she said. “And they are the last line of defense because they are also focused on protecting the basic freedoms of their constituents such as reproductive rights, voting rights, maintaining the rule of law,” added Meen-Draper.
With no clear party leader right now, high-profile governors like Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and JB Pritzker of Illinois have emerged as figures around whom Democrats can rally. The main goal is to reverse the trend of declining voter support in regions as diverse as the New York suburbs, the northern Midwest and the Sun Belt states.
Democratic governors have already unveiled their plans to counter the incoming Trump administration on issues related to LGBT+ rights, labor and reproductive rights. They vowed to oppose Trump's proposal to mass deport undocumented immigrants with the help of local law enforcement.
But California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks said “resistance (against Trump) is not enough” to help secure future victories and win over new voters.
„Yes, we must simultaneously protect our neighbors and preserve our rights, both here in California and across the country,”, he said. “But we also need to reexamine the principles of those who built the Democratic Party, which are working people,” Hicks added.