Where's Ken?

Martin O'Malley must have a sixth sense.

He was right when he said that the Democratic National Committee's failure to concentrate on down-ballot elections in 2010 would lead to a Republican blowout.  He was right when he said that Hillary Clinton could not beat Donald Trump in 2016.  And when Trump won again in 2024, O'Malley must have known what was coming at the Social Security Administration - Musk firing everybody there - when he quit at the end of November and decided he was better off running for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship to help the party fight back.

But after a decade of O'Malley being out of elective office, O'Malley found out that the Democrats still don't care about him.  The chief contestants for the DNC chairmanship election were Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Martin (below) prevailed in the election last month.

Ominously, Will Saletan of The Bulwark said that O'Malley, in addressing the DNC, gave the clearest and sharpest speech in making his case for what he felt the Democrats needed to do going forward.  But, as usual, Democrats didn't want to hear it.  (Unless, of course, Democratic committee members who elected the chair wrote in "Martin" because they were voting for O'Malley by his first name and the votes got miscounted for Ken Martin, but I doubt that.)

As soon as he became party chair, Martin published a memo, titled "Democrats Will Fight Against Trump's War on Working People."  In it, Martin said that too many Americans see the Democratic Party as the "party of the elites" and the Republican Party as the "party of the working class."  Martin also pledged to get the party out in the country and essentially follow Howard Dean's old fifty-state strategy, going on a national tour of his own that started in early February.  Talking to NBC News, Martin said, "It's time for the DNC to get out of D.C. That means getting out of our comfort zone, having tough but honest conversations with voters, and showing that we're willing to fight for people."   He continued, "It's time for Democrats to show up in all 3,244 counties—red, purple, blue—to make our case."

So where is he?

No, really where is he?

As far as I know, Martin is still on his tour.  But I don't hear about it much - and I've been getting most of my news from anti-Trump podcasts.  The hosts of these podcasts want to know where Martin is, too, and they have more access to what goes on in Washington politics than I do.

This is no small deal.  The end of Joe Biden's political career and the spectacle of Kamala Harris (this is the first time I've mentioned her name here in five weeks, and it may be longer still before I mention it again) being forced into early retirement have left a leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party.  That "deep bench" of Democratic talent hasn't yielded a person who could lead the party into the 2026 midterms and beyond with a positive, inspiring message.  There are no governors who have shown a desire to take up the Democratic mantle.  In Washington, you have New Yorkers Charles Schumer as Senate Democratic leader and Hakeem Jeffries as House Democratic leader - and even though the word "leader" is in their titles, looking to these Brooklyn bumpkins for leadership is like running up to the bridge on a sinking ship and finding out that the captain is Daffy Duck.

Therefore, Ken Martin, as the leader of the Democratic Party's national committee, is the de facto leader of the party at large.  And he'd better start acting like one. Republican National Committee chairs have always acted like the chief honcho in the GOP, even when a Republican is President. As a result, people knew who Lee Atwater, Haley Barbour,  Reince Priebus, and Ronna McDaniel were.  The less media-savvy Ken Martin is as much a cipher as his predecessor Jamie Harrison was. 

Until Martin gets his sea legs as party leader, the Democrats will have to rely on free agents among those in elective office - Eric Swalwell of California, Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Jamie Raskin of Maryland in the House and Chris Murphy of Connecticut in the Senate.  But the party really needs someone to lead from the front.  Martin O'Malley, who knows a thing or two about that sort of thing, could have provided that leadership for the party, if not for the country as President.  Bu again, Democrats weren't interested.    

With the threat of Trump possibly executing dissenters under martial law, let's hope Democrats don't get bored . . . to death.