Dear Democrats #1

Let's have a serious discussion:

We are at the threshold of momentous change for the Democratic Party. The election for the Chairmanship of the party is scheduled for the 1st of February 2025 at the party’s winter meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. 448 members of the Democratic National Committee will vote with 225 votes - a simple majority - needed to win. The winner will chart the future strategy of the party in the next four years.

I believe it will be momentous because it will have a lasting impact on our nation, either marking a turning point for the Democratic Party, or continuing on business as usual and thereby ceding this century to the Republican Party, now solidly controlled by MAGA adherents. Either way, the choice of 448 members will bind us all in irrevocable consequences. For those of us on the edge of society, either economically or culturally, this could cause immeasurable damage, setting back generational wealth and civil rights for decades.

Neoliberal New Democrats have controlled the party since the 1990s. Their ideology has been to separate culture and economic policy into two buckets. On the economic side they have gone along with Republicans on laissez-faire capitalism, where the benefits of business grew for the rich corporate owners and shareholders through deregulation and tax cuts at the expense of labor. On the cultural side, the neoliberals continue their liberal agenda to expand civil rights. Over the years this has alienated a large swath of the electorate as the party has abandoned the working poor and middle class to the vicissitudes of their corporate masters.

In recent years, this change in policy of the Democratic Party by the New Democrats has left the door open for traditional liberal progressives to win elections, and gain ground within the party. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has grown from 6 Congress people in 1991, to 100 today, and is the second largest caucus inside the Democratic Party behind the New Democrats. Recent elections have validated that the New Democrats are failing to win the public over with their policies, as they flip flop between progressive and neoliberal ideals to remain relevant:

“William Galston of the Brookings Institution, for example, argued that "by refusing to explain why she [Kamala Harris] had abandoned the progressive positions on crime, immigration, health care, and climate change, she blurred the public's perception of her", while conversely opening "the door to the Trump campaign's charge that she was a closet radical".^[123] According to D. D. Guttenplan, writers for The Nation had forecasted the results: "cozily campaigning with the Cheneys, we warned, was likely to alienate as least as many potential voters as it attracted."^[124] Likewise, John Nichols observed both Bernie Sanders and Shawn Fain, despite outward appearances, desperately attempting to persuade the Harris campaign "to return to the economic populism—and clear appeal to working-class voters—they had embraced in Chicago (only to abandon it in favor of attacks on Trump's character once the big donors weighed in).”

Money corrupts our government on all levels, from elections, to lobbying on Capital Hill, to influence within the party leadership. When both parties are tied to monied interests, is it any wonder the leadership loses touch with the vast majority of their constituents? Is it any wonder those who feel abandoned by this become depoliticized? This is what a country moving towards oligarchy looks like.

This is not the America I grew up in, neither what I raised my hand and vowed to protect and defend when I served in the military, nor raised my children to inherit when I am gone.

I think it is time for Americans to stand up to this predatory system, and demand change in the form of our expectations for anyone running for public office, and particularly those who will lead the Democratic Party and establish its national strategy to win again:

1. They must work to make the lives of their working poor and middle class constituents better. They must put people over corporations.

2. Business must not be allowed to prey on society to amass wealth for the rich by impoverishing the people. Its primary focus should be returning value to society for the privilege of the advantages it accrues. Corporations should be regulated, broken up if they become monopolies despite regulation, or turned into public utilities if their negative influence and impact on society is too great. Corporations only exist because we the people allow them to, and expect a public good to society from their existence.

3. No rich person should be allowed to pay less taxes and tax rates than anyone who makes less than they do. They should not be allowed to singularly own and control critical public infrastructure and media. As the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Money is not speech.

4. Public welfare and safety net policies and programs must be kept in place to counteract the tendencies of corporations to disadvantage the working class. Labor Unions must be supported in all states.

5. Certain things are human rights in a mature and modern democracy in the 21st Century. Among these are access to affordable healthcare, access to a quality education, a living wage, and the right to have our votes count. A society that is healthy in mind, body, finances, and feels they are not disenfranchised is a healthy society that builds a healthy democracy.

6. Minorities are protected from the abuse of the majority. The evils of the past must be addressed to make amends for our treatment of Native Americans, and African Americans. In both cases the perpetrators of Jim Crow and the Trail of Tears have been allowed to get away with what they did and profit from it. They must challenge harmful stereotypes and efforts that demonize immigrant, Black, Brown, indigenous, and LGBGTQ communities. Immigrants must have a clear path to citizenship; they do the jobs no one here will do and pay into our social security and tax systems enriching us all. The terror unleashed on them by the current administration must stop.

The top three candidates for chairmanship of the DNC are Ken Martin (51) with 200 pledged votes, Ben Wikler (43) with 131 pledged votes, and Martin O’Malley (62) with 100 pledged votes.

Ken Martin and Martin O’Malley are clearly neoliberal New Democrats - and focus on raising donor money over addressing the real needs of people. Martin O’Malley ran the Social Security Administration, and rather than gaining new operational funding - established the ‘concierge’ service - where people have to schedule a meeting, rather than picking up the phone because the number of workers in the Social Security Administration are at all time lows, kicking the can down the road. Between the two, I feel Ken Martin is more in tune with the reality, yet his focus is again on the donor class rather than the working class.

Ben Wikler, the younger of the three, focuses on what is really important: people over corporations and is the most progressive of the three and has had the most success turning a red state blue. He articulated the reason the Democrats lost the last election and how to come back and win in the future the most clearly.

Whoever wins - I would urge them to make Ben Wikler a key strategist at the national level, if he doesn’t win outright. We need new blood in the party who can make the changes needed, and avoid the danger of another status quo milquetoast attempt against MAGA, which only ends in disaster.

Here are the interviews with each of the top three candidates by Marc Elias, so you can judge for yourself: