What We Need Out of the DNC

Time to Get On With It

Donald John Trump will be the 47th president of the United States. As improbable as it still seems, he won the Electoral College and the popular vote. He outran most winning Republican senate candidates and had tailwinds that may have helped propel several vulnerable incumbents, like Deb Fischer and Ted Cruz, back to Washington. Republicans picked up senate seats and held the House of Representatives. For all intents and purposes, they already control the Supreme Court.

Many in the press have also bent the knee to Trump. Jeff Bezos did not even wait for the election to do it, intervening to pull the Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris before it ran. Let’s wait and see what the large conglomerates do when Trump threatens their mergers if they don’t get their media subsidiaries in line but I bet he won’t even have to threaten. The executives in their C-Suites know the man and how he operates, so they will preemptively bend. So much of the media, predicated on access and focused on the shiny object that gets clicks, will fail to do the hard work required of this moment, just as they failed to do since Trump rode down that golden escalator almost a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has set himself up as a shadow co-ruler, getting on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Democratic Party is in disarray, rudderless and leaderless. The names being bandied about to lead the Democratic National Committee range from good to unacceptable. But without an apparent heir to the White House — the first time the Democrats have found themselves in this situation since 1988 — the next chair of the Democratic National Committee will fill a large void.

For many years, the same people have been running the DNC, even if the names atop the masthead have changed. That should be all over now. Here is what we should demand out of the next DNC chair.

Authenticity

It is very clear that voters are tired of politicians, so until we have a presidential primary, the face of the party has to be someone who is authentically himself or herself. It is no coincidence that there were ticket splitters in The Bronx and Queens, people who voted for both Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Love them or hate them, both Trump and Ocasio-Cortez radiate authenticity. John Fetterman isn’t worried about dropping the F-bomb every once in a while. Neither is Rahm Emmanuel. Enough of the carefully calibrated, scripted old white men who look like they are afraid of opening their mouths until they figure out how not to offend every single person in the room. You’re going to offend someone. The key is to make sure they know you are coming from a position of genuine principle and not because your handlers have told you what to say.

Communications Skills

It should not be solely up to pundits (ahem) to carry the message on behalf of our values. Figure out what that message is and carry it relentlessly, anywhere and everywhere. Go on apolitical podcasts, go on Joe Rogan, go on Fox News, go on whatever liberal media landscape will arise out of the ashes. Do TikTok, find a twenty-something who knows what Generation Z watches and go wherever he or she tells you to go.

If you don’t know how to answer basic questions, flip the script on a hostile interviewer or handle a cable news anchor, you can’t handle the job.

It takes talent to be able to speak to Joy Reid at 7 PM and Jesse Watters at 8 PM — and speak to them both in a language that resonates with their viewers. And although it seems like the media landscape is Balkanized, there are enough people who flip between MSNBC and Fox News to know when you are bullshitting them on one or the other. Consistency is key. That is a communications skill very few politicians have, without looking inauthentic. The next DNC chair must have it.

Grassroots Skills

I am a firm believer that Democrats became the party of elites at two critical junctures: In 1993, when Bill Clinton fought to ratify NAFTA and in 2009, when Barak Obama failed to hold someone on Wall Street accountable for the Great Recession. I understand how both NAFTA and the Wall Street bailouts (which were actually initiated under George W. Bush) helped spur the economy. But that’s not how a lot of people who watched their jobs exported abroad or their life savings evaporate see it.

The next leader of the DNC needs to be someone who can speak to these people and bring them back to the Democratic Party. That means it cannot be someone who has spent more time on Wall Street than on Main Street.

Outreach Skills

In this election, too many Democrats stayed home, uninspired by the direction of their national ticket. But many others flipped from Biden to Trump, including Native Americans and Latino men. In 2020, Biden won Latino men by 23 points, 59%-36%. In 2024, Trump won them by ten points, 54% to 44%.

Is this all down to misogyny, as some pundits think? I have no idea but I find it hard to believe that a swing that large is simply because Latino men do not want a woman as president. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Latino men by 31 points. Clinton also won Black men by 69% — or 13 points better than Harris.

Asian voters, once firmly in the Democratic coalition, are also swinging further to the right.

In fact, the only cohort with whom Trump appears to have worse with than in 2016 was with White voters, both men and women. He was down with them across the board, regardless of educational attainment.

The next chair of the DNC needs to be someone who can reach out to every group the party has been hemorrhaging  and every group with which we have made gains. That means it cannot be someone who brings personal baggage to the job — not with women, not with voters of color. The press loves nothing more than latching on to and rehashing scandal and this is not time for a focus on anyone’s scandals but Donald Trump’s.

Fundraising Skills

Trump will screw up — and probably very fast. His honeymoon period, if one exists, will end quickly. At that point, Democratic donors, many of whom feel stunned and paralyzed now, will begin to re-engage. A good chair will inspire both the large donors and the grassroots to open up their wallets — and ensure that the money is used at the point of attack and not on performative nonsense.

Odds and Ends:

Speaking of Trump

It’s getting bad already.

Earlier this week, Trump’s national security nominations caused relief in some normie quarters from Washington to Jerusalem. The thinking goes that it could have been much worse: instead of nominating Marco Rubio to state, Mike Waltz as NSC advisor and Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations, Trump could have gone with some totally unqualified MAGA flunkies. (Kristi Noem at Homeland Security is irrelevant, because the place will actually be run by Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, who are as bad as you might imagine and will be running roughshod over her anyway.)

I did a show on this yesterday morning with John Berman at CNN. We were so young and hopeful 24 hours ago.

Because, of course, it did get worse later in the day. Trump nominated (read: recess appointed) Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense. Hegseth and I used to work together at Fox News years ago. He is a fun guy to drink with. Back when I first met him, he was a typical George Bush Neo-con who aggressively defended the invasion of Iraq, where he had served. He had aspirations to run for senate as a conventional Republican.

No more. Hegseth went through some personal issues and quickly realized that MAGA was the place where those issues would not harm him politically. Plus, you don’t get a gig hosting Fox and Friends (Weekend or otherwise) without going full MAGA. Most importantly, talking up Trump on his favorite network means that the president will take your phone calls.

To be clear, Hegseth is a loyalist who is unqualified to head the world’s most powerful military. He served in war, yes, but so did millions of others who should not be running the Pentagon. Concurrently, MAGA supporters have also brought up his degrees from Princeton and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, which they would normally label “elitist,” were it not a Trump appointee who is touting them.

Please. Doing well on your SATs and taking calculus in high school does not mean that you are qualified to run the Department of Defense and have access to our nuclear arsenal. Get over yourselves.

With Hegseth’s background, I am not at all certain that he could have gotten top secret clearance in the real world. This won’t matter under Trump, of course, but it should. Our national security is not something to trifle with. If Hegseth’s only role is to oversee a purge of “disloyal” generals and ensure that Trump fulfills his campaign promise of using the military against "the enemy from within,” he is in the right spot. But, as we know, the Secretary of Defense also deals with real matters of war and peace, not just violations of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Hegseth has taken some interesting positions over the years. He lobbied Trump on behalf of service members convicted of war crimes. Before Trump and Kim Jong-un became besties, he advocated nuking North Korea. He opposes women in combat, where they have served honorably and bravely for years. He wants to weaken rules against war crimes. He thinks that the slaughter happening in Ukraine “pales in comparison” to the “wokeness” in American culture. And so on.

Hegseth would take on this role as the world is embroiled in major crises, from the war in Ukraine to the war(s) in the Middle East to China’s aggression in East Asia to Trump’s weakening of the NATO alliance.

It will be interesting to see how Republican senators who wear ribbons in support of our military react to Hegseth’s appointment. My guess is that they will fall in line. Our troops deserve better. So does our nation and our allies.