How Tom Perez Must Work to Unify the Democratic Party
The future of the party is in Perez’s hands
By Jackson Littlewood
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
ON FEBRUARY 25th, 2017, TOM PEREZ ASSUMED OFFICE as the new Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Perez won in a close election against Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison by a vote of 235–200. Perez also named Ellison as his Deputy Chairman. With Perez’s election, there are many questions that the new Democrats must face, and Perez is going to have to answer those questions as the new face of the party.
Challenge #1: Electing Democrats
Within this massive task come a few different sub-challenges, if you will. And Perez will need to try and solve these issues if he is going to be successful as the DNC Chairman.
Strategically making use of funds
The first sub-challenge he is going to face is how the party is going to use the money that they can raise. I frame the question this way because the Democratic Party has already shown that they can raise more money than Republicans. In 2016, the Democrats both outraised and outspent the Republicans by about $300,000,000.
Despite this, the Democrats lost the presidency and were unable to take control of the House and Senate. What this means is that the Democrats may be allocating their resources in a way that is hurting instead of helping the party. The problem could be anything from spending money in less electorally significant states to spending money on ads that aren’t effective. One of Perez’s duties as the Democratic Party Chairman will be to analyze where their resources are going, and to come up with a spending strategy that will help the party win future elections.
Battling existing corruption in the DNC
In July of 2016, thousands of DNC emails were leaked and later published by WikiLeaks. There is definitely a conversation to be had about whether or not Russia leaked these emails to WikiLeaks, and if that turns out to be true, it will be deeply troubling for obvious reasons. However, for the sake of argument, I’d like to put that aside and focus on what was in the emails and how constituents feel about the contents.
Shortly after the scandal began, The Washington Post reported that many of the leaked emails showed that the DNC had been trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’ candidacy and tilt the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. Now, it’s true that many of these emails came late in the primary after it was fairly clear that Hillary Clinton was going to win. However, what matters is the perception of the scandal from voters. Voters have clearly expressed outrage at the DNC for this scandal, and Donald Trump made sure to attack Hillary Clinton on it during the campaign. Perez must work to combat this corruption for the sake of the unification of the party.
Fighting Donald Trump
The problem Perez faces here is that he isn’t as effective of a speaker as someone like Keith Ellison, so his contributions to helping the Democrats fight Trump is going to have to come in a different form. Where Perez can really do some damage to the Republicans is by putting more progressive economic policies into the party platform. As Secretary of Labor, Perez issued the Home Care Rule, requiring home care workers for the elderly and people with disabilities to receive minimum wage and overtime compensation. This might be viewed as a small accomplishment, but this — along with Perez’s strong pro-union record — show that he can push the party platform to the left on issues relating to labor. If Perez can be successful in that endeavor, he can help push the party into a winning position in 2018 and 2020, simply because it presents an alternative to Donald Trump that benefits workers more than a neoliberal agenda.
Challenge #2: Uniting the Democratic Party
In the 2016 election, the Democratic Party became more starkly divided into two wings. The first wing is the Hillary Clinton wing of the party, and they believe in a very liberal social policy combined with a more center-right and neoliberal approach on economics, meaning deregulation of banks like the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, support for trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, and a gradual approach on issues like taxes and the minimum wage. The other wing is the Bernie Sanders wing, and they support the same liberal social policy, combined with a more Scandinavian approach on economics, meaning higher taxes on the wealthy, free healthcare, free education, anti-corruption laws, etc.
The question is: has Tom Perez alienated the Bernie wing of the party? My answer is that he hasn’t alienated them yet. Perez certainly has taken some policy positions in the past that would upset the Bernie wing. The most obvious one is his support for the TPP. Progressives spent much of the primary bashing the deal, and even made Hillary Clinton pivot to be opposed to the deal as well. So, it’s certainly true that progressives are angry with Perez, and they should be. However, they shouldn’t completely dismiss Perez as someone who is going to be completely neoliberal on economics. If you adopt that mindset, you ignore a good portion of his record as Secretary of Labor. However, Perez is going to have to move the platform to the left consistently, otherwise the Democrats can look forward to more division, and — as a result — more losses in the future.
