Pushing back against President-elect Trump is going to require better messengers, grassroots engagement and rebuilding state-level parties, according to candidates for chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Speaking at the DNC Future Forum in Arizona on Saturday, the seven candidates for leader of the DNC mostly echoed each other in their solutions for fixing the rising tide of Democratic electoral defeats laid bare in 2016. The plans centered on taking power out of Washington, D.C., and putting it back in the states and on the streets.
“We have to rebuild the trust relationship with the voter and that means we have to be at the door and we have to build that relationship on a personal basis,” said Rep. Keith Ellison, a Minnesota congressman widely believed to be the front-runner for the post.
Jaime Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, emphasized just how far the party has fallen since President Obama’s victory in 2008.
In 2008, the Democrats had control of the majority of state capitals, governorships, the U.S. House of Representatives and 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, not to mention Obama’s historic win. Less than 10 years later, Republicans control the federal government and have most of the country’s state capitals and governorships.
The reason for that, according to Harrison, is the collapse of the state parties around the country. Most are broke or close to it, and are shrinking their staffs, he said, adding that the state parties need to be the way that the party’s message is delivered to voters and right now they’re crippled.
“We have got to get back to doing what Democrats have done so well,” he said. “We are not just a political organization asking for votes every two or four years. We need to be a community organization, going into the community on the grassroots level working on issues that are important to the community.”
Secretary of Labor Tom Perez said the party’s leadership needs to utilize technology to engage with the party’s rank-and-file members more than ever before. Perez said he wants the chair of the DNC to have a conference call with state leaders every month, have regional leaders hold a conference call with their members once a month and to have a live stream to engage with people.
He added Democrats are not bringing the right tools into political fights. He said too often Democrats are poorly armed when Republicans come ready to fight.
“You don’t go to a knife fight with a spoon. I’ve been in a lot of knife fights and I’ve never brought a spoon to ’em,” he said.
“When we took on [former Mericopa County, Ariz., Sherrif] Joe Arapaio, there were no spoons. When we took on the lending industry, no spoons. So, we have got to have a no spoons rule when we’re taking on Donald Trump.”
Jehmu Greene, a political commentator, said her plan is to train spokespeople to get out in the community to make the Democratic case to voters.
The war against Trump is going to be fought in the media, she said.
“We have to build a pipeline of messengers, of diverse, young passionate messengers,” she said.
“It is going to take a solid messenger to push back against the hate, push back against the lies, push back against the disinformation about our candidates and our values and there’s no question that we rightfully went high in this election. But, when they went low, there was no bedrock to meet them.”
Sally Ann Boynton Brown, the chair of the Idaho Democratic party, said the DNC needs to be something Democrats can be proud of again.
Her plan would be to focus on “freedom and constitutional rights,” which she says have been eroded in the last several years. She would try to bring the two branches of the party into harmony; one branch wants to be positive and focus on the Democratic agenda, the other wants to “punch people in the eye” who run afoul of their beliefs.
“It’s got to be both sides, we have to feed both sides of our party,” she said. “For too long, we have not had an identity brand that has worked for us. I have heard from too many states that ‘we need to distance ourselves from the DNC.’ Why? Why? They are our party.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, from South Bend, Ind., said Democrats can’t simply vilify Trump for the next four years and expect that to work.
He said many Trump voters don’t think the incoming president is a good person, but they voted for him anyway. Instead, it’s incumbent upon Democrats to tell voters why and how his policies may harm people, Buttigieg said.
“We have got to get back to experience, to lived experience,” he said. “None of this is theoretical.”
