The Democratic Party: My Takeaways from the DNC Winter Meeting and Officer Elections
THE PROCESS OF ELECTING A DNC CHAIR
The Democratic National Committee gathered in Atlanta this past weekend for their winter meeting in order to elect new officers that will serve the next four-years.
The body elected former Labor Secretary Tom Perez over Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison as their new chairman. The election brought conclusion to a hotly contested race that, at one time, had nine candidates and focused heavily on how to channel the base’s anti-Trump energy into an electoral rebound in the oncoming elections.
After two rounds of voting via paper ballots, Perez defeated Ellison in a 235–200 vote among the committee’s 435 members. A second round of voting was required because no candidate received the majority (50% plus 1) vote after the first round. Perez, however, was one vote shy of a first round majority because the other candidates, refusing to drop out prior to balloting, received 13.5 total votes.
Following his election, Perez moved to make Keith Ellison his deputy chair and the DNC membership then continued to elect other officers.
MY TAKEAWAYS
1: The DNC cares about appearance.
The DNC has bamboozled us. DNC Chair Tom Perez moved to suspend the rules and appoint Representative Keith Ellison as deputy chair because he wanted the party to appear “unified.” However, the truth of the matter is that the party is far from it: members who believed in Clinton and Obama’s vision over Sanders’ have created a deep divide within the party. On Saturday, the divide was put on public display when Resolution 33 failed to be included with the package that was passed. Resolution 33 sought to ban corporate money from being accepted by the Democratic Party. This ultimately shows that Chairman Perez, Deputy Chair Ellison and the DNC as a whole care way more about appearance. They do not want the public to know the inner workings of the party and have manifested a strong show of unity in its place.
2: The DNC is still the party of Obama.
Despite Obama’s absence in the oval office, the party is still very much his. Part of the reason Perez won the election was due to the support he received from the Obama coalition during his campaign for the chair. Perez was endorsed by former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder as well as Obama’s former Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, who even went so far as campaigning for him in the election’s final days. This goes to show that the DNC is still very much Obama’s because his power heavily influence the election’s outcome.
3: The DNC still needs help with millennials.
The DNC only sadly elected only three officers who are millennials: At-Large Vice Chair Mike Blake, Secretary Jason Rae, and President of the Association of State Democratic Chairs Ken Martin. More has to be done in terms of gaining more millennial representation. Currently, the only millennial representatives are the President and Vice President of the Young Democrats as well as the College Democrats of America. This is unacceptable. The DNC needs to quickly come up with a plan to engage millennials.
SUMMARY
All in all, the DNC’s new leadership has a lot of work to do to rebuild the party. The issues that I have highlighted must be addressed to build a strong party. We, as Democrats, should monitor our party’s actions closely. To build a stronger party, its members must be involved with these decisions. As Democrats, we must honestly assess the party’s future on its current path and act accordingly to change it for the better.
Born in Baltimore, M.D., Braxton Gregory Becoats is a senior History major and English minor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He has held various leadership roles on campus, such as a Senator in the Student Government Association, Social Justice Chairman in the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel, and Chairman of the Student Welfare and Concerns and Constitution and Bylaws Committees in the Student Government Association.
