When I hear about the rage over last weekend’s election for DNC chairman, I tend to dismiss it as wishful Republican thinking. But then you read things like this interview yesterday, between NPR’s David Greene and Leslie Wimes, president of the Democratic African-American Women Caucus in Florida:
GREENE: So is Perez the right leader to – to unite the party, as he says?
WIMES: Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
GREENE: OK.
WIMES: Perez is just Debbie Wasserman Schultz with XY chromosomes….He’s establishment. The establishment Democrats, they want to maintain their power and position at all costs. And when Perez got in the race, I knew that it was over for Keith Ellison. They just wanted to make sure that they maintain their power and position. So while I’m disappointed that Keith Ellison didn’t win, I’m not surprised.
Wimes also dismissed Perez’s quick decision to name Ellison his deputy.
You know, the bottom line is this. That —- that bone, if you will, was so that his supporters and, in essence, the Bernie – Elizabeth – Elizabeth Warren wing of the party – would coalesce. And that’s not going to happen. The progressive wing, we’re tired of the bones that they throw. We want meat, and that’s not meat.
I understand someone being disappointed at their candidate’s loss, but the vitriol in this kind of statement baffles me. The party chairman, for either party, is a mere functionary whose job revolves around the mechanics of winning elections.
I understand there are a lot of Democrats who think they lost in 2016 because they weren’t boldly progressive enough. I don’t agree, but fine. Arguing on those terms, Perez is no slouch from an ideological perspective, and has easily I think achieved a lot more for the progressive cause than Ellison has in Congress.
First, Perez just led an Obama Labor Department so radical that six states have passed right-to-work since Obama’s election just to get their employers (mostly) out from under its thumb. That’s after decades during which just a few states did so.
Perez’s tenure at the Justice Department was everything those obsessed with identity politics could have hoped for. He really put it on the line and was even accused of committing official misconduct in a complicated bid to prevent a Supreme Court decision from being handed down that might have struck down liberals’ favored “disparate impact” theory of housing discrimination. Say what you will about that, but it suggests he really does believe in the cause.
Doesn’t it?
