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.  But 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.

He's Back . . . Again.

Just when I thought Martin O'Malley's story had an ending, and a happy one at that . . . the semi-legend continues. 😉 

O'Malley resigned as commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) in late November, after only a year and change on the job.  He instituted a number of reforms at the SSA and streamlined the bureaucracy in his brief tenure as commissioner before deciding to move on - a decision he wouldn't have made, I'm sure, if Kamala Harris had won the presidential election.

Instead, O'Malley is running for the job many of his supporters - all twelve of us - were promoting him for in 2016 when Trump won the White House the first time . . . chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

On paper, O'Malley looks like a shoo-in for DNC chair.  He's held three executive positions in public office (mayor, governor, SSA commissioner), he knows how to repeat a message and not make it sound stale when you've heard it for the 2,314th time, he has appealing policies, and he has a solid record of achievement.  But he has stiff competition from Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chairman Ken Martin, who is known for his communication skills and his desire to reach out to as many different demographic groups as possible and make everyone in the Democratic Party understand the stakes they have in ensuring the party's success, and Ben Wikler, the chairman of the state Democratic Party in Wisconsin, where he's had big successes in a state more politically divided than the country is in getting Democrats elected statewide.  Wikler, for his part, believes that the Democrats need to follow the Republicans' example and start "a nationwide permanent campaign, with a battle plan and resources for every state and territory in the country."

Also, both Martin and Wikler are younger than O'Malley, which is a 180-degree flip from when he was the youngest 2016 Democratic presidential candidate among the top three contenders and was shamed for what was perceived to be ageism-charged slights against the (much) more popular Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  At 62, O'Malley isn't a senior yet, but as the one contender among the top three candidates for the DNC chair who's old enough to have a grandchild in fifth grade, he certainly looks the part of an aging patriarch.

I'm not a Democrat - I prefer to maintain politically independent, even in New Jersey, a closed-primary state - so I will not express a preference for anyone in the DNC chair campaign.  But I will wish O'Malley well.  And may the best candidate win.

Which is another way of saying that I hope Marianne Williamson - another DNC chair candidate - doesn't get it.     

The picture of Martin O'Malley shown above is a screenshot from a YouTube interview he did on one of the site's many podcasts.  Notice that, immediately behind O'Malley's left shoulder, is a portrait of him . . . unfinished, much like Gilbert Stuart's unfinished portrait of George Washington, and, despite being framed, propped up against the wall, not yet ready for proper hanging.  How symbolic.  Because, contrary to what many people may have thought many times before, Martin O'Malley's story is a story that has yet to be completed. 

The New Democratic National Committee Chairman

It's Tom Perez.

Although Keith Ellison and several other candidates for the post of Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman fought the good fight, the 447 members of the committee, who voted yesterday (the vote was not scheduled for today, as I had stated earlier), chose a party insider who has been loyal to the establishment and is seen to be friendlier to wealthy donors and to the Clintons than to the millions of people who backed Bernie Sanders and the dozen or so of us who were for Martin O'Malley.  (O'Malley, who made Perez his Secretary of Labor, Licensing and Regulation when he became governor of Maryland, wouldn't back Perez for the DNC chairmanship.  That should tell you something.)

The Democrats could have gotten someone new and fresh  - alas, South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg withdrew at the last minute - but chose instead a political hack who is seen, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, as "a reliable functionary and trustworthy loyalist by those who have controlled the party and run it into the ground."  Indeed - he blindly supported Hillary Clinton (that's the only way you could do it - blindly) in the 2016 presidential primaries (and O'Malley was clearly getting even by supporting Buttigieg, not that it mattered), and he's pretty much at Bill and Hillary's beck and call.  In fact, he advised Hillary Clinton during her 2016 primary campaign, and he suggested that she paint Sanders as the "white candidate" to build and shore up her support among minorities.  And isn't it weird that Hillary Clinton herself would put out a video message of resistance to Donald Trump on the eve of the DNC chairmanship vote to convince us that she's still relevant?  (She wants to run for President again.) 

Oh yeah, on a separate vote, a resolution that would have banned "registered, federal corporate lobbyists" from serving as at-large DNC members was rejected.  Money talks, and the people walk.

Although Perez made Ellison his deputy chairman to quell angry progressives and promised to go after the working-class and rural and exurban voters who backed Trump in 2016, most liberals realize that the Democratic Party no longer represents their interests (and hasn't since the Vietnam War ended) and are ready to bolt the party.  There have already been calls for a convention to found a new party . . . similar to the calls for meetings in Michigan and Wisconsin in 1854 that led to the Republican Party, which quickly supplanted the Whigs and recruited ex-Whigs Abraham Lincoln and William Seward, as well as the Frelinghuysen political dynasty in New Jersey, among others.  And the Huffington Post has been circulating a petition to make it happen.

I predict that Perez's elevation to the DNC chairmanship is going to accelerate a mass exodus from the Democratic Party and cause the first major change of the nation's two-party system in 160 years.  Any Democrat currently eyeing a White House run in 2020 will have to make a decision whether to stay with the old party or join the new one.  All Democrats now have to understand that they should either lead, follow, or get out of the way.  

We all know what the DNC chose to do. :-(

(Some good news: Stephanie Hansen won the state Senate special election in Delaware.)

The Crash Years

The United States is the Howard Cosell of nations. That is, we're so wrapped up in our own self-importance that we have no idea how much the rest of the world hates us, at least until we elect a dim-bulb conservative to be our President - then we get a sample of such antipathy.

Ironically, Donald Trump is causing antipathy among European nations for having no idea how important we are to them.  He's had to have Cabinet members like Defense Secretary James Mattis, quickly becoming the jewel in the tin crown of an administration (though I'm willing to give Secretary of State Rex Tillerson the benefit of the doubt for now, and new national security adviser H.R. McMaster looks to be a sensible guy), assure European leaders that the Trumpster will not pull back from the NATO alliance in the face of Russian expansion.  Oh yeah, and we're not out to grab Iraqi oil either.  

Also, Vice President Mike Pence went to Munich over the weekend to reassure fellow NATO members that the alliance is strong.  The fact that he's a heartbeat away from ultimate power couldn't possibly have reassured the Europeans, though, because whereas Trump is a vulgarian, Pence is just a rube.  He denies climate science and evolution, and he tried to regulate women and preserve legalized homophobia as governor of Indiana.  European leaders tend to be rather sophisticated, like a gourmet meal.  Mike Pence is the political equivalent of ham and raisin sauce. 

While the United States tries to avoid a collision with its own allies (can you really call them "friends"?), the Democratic Party is trying to avoid an internal crackup - a crackup that, I believe, is as inevitable as Hillary Clinton's perpetual campaign for the Presidency if Clinton stooge Tom Perez is chosen as the Democratic National Committee's (DNC's) chairman.  Perez will undoubtedly push the party toward the Clintons' corporate agenda and split the party down the middle.  Diana Price of Inquisitr.com made this point quite acidly in a recent column in which she also noted that, while the Russian government may very well have colluded with the Trump campaign, the Democratic e-mails uncovered, whether leaked by the Russians or by WikiLeaks acting alone, showed how the party establishment favored Hillary and was pulling every possible trick to ensure her nomination at the expense of other candidates, including Martin O'Malley and the front-running anti-Hillary, Bernie Sanders.

"It's the height of hypocrisy," Price wrote, "for the corporate Democrats and the DNC to complain about election manipulation when the DNC emails leaked verify that the DNC - and former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in particular - was gaming the primaries for Hillary Clinton."  Not only were debates limited, but - and this kills me - there was widespread voter disenfranchisement by reducing the number of polling sites in some areas and many voters were purged from the primary and caucus registers. Among other things.  Now that the election is over, Hillary backers in the party establishment are not only unrepentant, they keep ignoring O'Malley and disrespecting Sanders.  They even got angry at Sanders for proposing that less expensive Canadian drugs be legalized for importation into the United States, a bill amendment that every Republican and also thirteen Senate Democrats - including the heir apparent to the Hillary faction, New Jersey senator Cory Booker - refused to support.  Also, Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison. the "Sanders Democrat" in the DNC chairmanship race, has actually demanded that Sanders give his mailing list to the party establishment, which would most certainly be against the wishes of Sanders supporters.

So, imagine what will happen if Perez is chosen as the party chairman?   

So, even if the Russians worked in concert with the Trump campaign - and that is a very serious charge, and one that is grounds for impeachment should it be proven - that doesn't change the fact that whoever leaked these e-mails only proved that the Democratic establishment, by trying to silence the anti-Hillary members of their party and getting them to hold their noses and vote for Hillary in November, is more to blame for Trump's victory than the Kremlin.  If Sanders or O'Malley had been the Democratic presidential nominee and WikiLeaks or the Russians or the Trump campaign or whomever found evidence that the Democratic primary process was fair and clean and that rank-and-file Democrats were happy with the nominee, there would have been nothing for Trump to capitalize on, and, likely thus, no Trump victory.     

Price sums things up nicely:

"With the huge grassroots following behind Bernie Sanders, do you really want to push that argument that Sanders is not someone you want helping shape the Democratic Party, and, in fact, Sanders is someone who offers voters an alternative party to Democrats? This is yet another example of the arrogant thinking by the DNC that voters have to choose either their chosen corporate Democrat juiced into lobbyist interests or choose a Republican. Apparently, the DNC and establishment Democrats don’t realize they are promoting a mass exodus and the demise of their own party with that argument and are incapable of learning their lessons."

A Democratic National Committee chairman who serves the interests of the Clintons rather than the interests of the rank-and-file party members will surely trigger such a mass exodus the same way Whig squeamishness over slavery triggered a defection of its northern and western members to the nascent Republican Party in the 1850s.

At which point Martin O'Malley will do what Abraham Lincoln did in 1856 - tell his old party to screw themselves and join a new party, in the present case a party that Sanders will have already formed.   

How To Rebuild a Party - The O'Malley Way

Martin O'Malley not only wants to run for President again in 2020, he wants to save the Democratic Party from itself.

The former Maryland governor and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate is wasting no time in helping to put Democrats - now on the verge of extinction - back on the road to recovery by putting his money where his mouth is.  You might recall that O'Malley had pleaded with Democratic leaders to pay more attention to state and local races and was ignored, and the results of that inattention can no longer be dismissed.  (The party itself is being dismissed.)  So that's what he's doing - addressing the problem.  He was in Delaware this past Saturday campaigning for Stephanie Hansen, the Democratic nominee for the special election for the Delaware state Senate seat  in the Tenth Senatorial District, which Democrat Bethany Hall-Long recently vacated to become the state's lieutenant governor.  The outcome of this election decides party control of the state Senate.  The election is scheduled for February 25.

Hansen (below) is the sort of Democrat that O'Malley wants to see at all levels of government.  She is for preserving open space and balancing development with open space preservation, improving public schools, and preserving property tax credits for elderly constituents on a fixed income.  In other words, she, like O'Malley, is a progressive but not a nut about it. 

O'Malley has already campaigned for Democrats in state legislative races, most notably for Jim Lykam in a special state Senate election in Iowa, which Lykam won.   O'Malley knows that, if the Democrats have any chance of coming back for 2018 and 2020 and avoid the fate of the Whigs in the 1850s, they have to win at the local level and work their way up. They need state legislative seats, school board seats, municipal council seats, mayoralties, and county executive positions - then they need to regain governorships and U.S. congressional seats.  And they need to engage voters on the local level and find out what's on their minds, not just read opinion polls.  That's why O'Malley is supporting this man for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairmanship. 

He is Pete Buttigieg, the current mayor of South Bend, Indiana. An openly gay man who served in the Navy Reserves during the Afghanistan War (and while he was mayor, at that), he has made redevelopment of South Bend a top priority in his administration, and he's made a point in getting things done and showing how municipal government can work.  More to the point, though, he's young, he's experienced, he's smart (he was a Rhodes Scholar) and he's a Midwestern Democrat who knows how to talk to people in a region of the country that went solidly for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.  Which is why he's perfect for the job . . . well, not entirely perfect.  He's still an incumbent officeholder, and that may impede him should he be elected chairman.  But Buttigieg, a millennial, represents the future of the country far better than Tom Perez or Keith Ellison; he's mostly been  unsullied by inside Washington politics.  (Buttigieg did work for an international-policy consulting firm in Washington for a year.)  

Alas, I have a feeling that Buttigieg won't get the nod to run the DNC.  Why?  Because he's a logical, sensible choice - can't have anything like that in the Democratic Party!  But maybe Democrats, who choose their national committee chairman on February 26, should heed Buttigieg's words ("We have to have the humility to figure out where the party fits in the broader movement, not the other way around," he told a DNC forum in Baltimore) and those of his chief backer.  Because guys like Buttigieg and O'Malley know what the Democratic establishment apparently doesn't - the party has to get back to its roots and reconnect with working people, else it will disintegrate the same way the Whig Party did after the Whigs found out too late that nominating another old war hero for President (Winfield Scott) wasn't enough to endear themselves to the electorate.  Similarly, nominating another Clinton for President wasn't enough for the Democrats to endear themselves to the voters either.