The Way Forward

Excerpts... to read the full interview, use this link.
https://the.ink/p/hard-truths-interview-faiz-shakir-democratic-national-committee-chair

Among the newer contenders is Faiz Shakir — former political director of the ACLU, the head of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, and current executive director of the media organization More Perfect Union.
Shakir offers a very different vision, of a DNC chair who can refocus the position and the party, with a commitment to rebuilding the Democrats’ traditional working-class base, putting the donor class in its place, and educating its elected members about how to negotiate the media landscape to speak honestly to voters about their needs and dreams...

Giridharadas: ...I feel like the space that has been opened up in the wake of this Trump victory is actually a really big, broad space. So I want to invite you now to fill that space with some of your hardest truths. What are the things that you want to tell people are true now, hard truths about how the Democratic Party has shown up? What are the reasons it shows up that way? And how is it going to have to change?

Shakir: ...My first reaction was, whoa, what the heck are these caucuses? Like, we’ve got to change this structure because very little purpose and meaning is going into this. We are telling people when they join the Democratic Party, “You worked hard, maybe you ran for something, you want it, and now you're a member of the DNC. Great. When you come to our winter meeting, summer meeting, whatever it might be, what do you do there?”

Nothing.

You actually go and join in a little group and you sit over there and you separate yourself out by skin color, or race, or identity, whatever it might be. And then you sit there and there's no mission or purpose.

I'm like, whoa, let's break this. How about mission and purpose? What are some? Well, obviously, you know, we're lacking for ambition there. So I'm going to offer a few...

...working-class people hold us in higher regard. They have a higher bar for us than they do for Republicans. They think of our historical lineage: You fight for the common person. That is what you are.

So I will penalize you greater if I don't feel like you are going to stick your necks out for me in a rigged economy in which I think I'm getting screwed over. And you’re the people who fought for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, I'm expecting you to bring it right now because we're swimming in a sea of selfishness and greed here. So you bring me your passion because I need you now. And when we don't meet it, they penalize us greater. They stay home. They say, hey, I'm out....

OK, this institution, call it the Democratic National Committee, whatever you want to say, labor union. When you have the devolution of power and it goes away from that to super PAC, ... OK, what happens?...

We have to have a conviction-oriented conversation.
So our brand is lacking it right now. It is a sense that the Democratic Party, very polite, very nice, but, you know, very slow, very lethargic, doesn't want to have honest conversations around the things that they truly believe.
So I'm not sure what you truly believe, when I see you agree on the Green New Deal here, now you're not, or you're interested in trans issues at this point, now you're seemingly not as interested.

In my mind, these are all easy to deal with if you have conviction and talk about it.
But when they see you not talking about them, you're going to get penalized.

So my view is that the things you're talking about — of not winning online with some of these forums — is downstream of the fact that upstream, decisions were made that we can not talk about these five things right now. Can we not discuss the challenge of immigration, the border crossings, and what they're doing in Chicago, and how they're hurting the social safety net there in schools and healthcare systems? So it's dicey. It's very difficult. I don't know what you'd have to say. Why don't we not say anything?

Well, people aren't dumb. They're watching. They're seeing that. And my view is that we can solve the downstream things of you being interesting online. But you're going to go on Joe Rogan (or Anand’s show), right? And you're going to get asked, “Hey, so a lot of people are interested in what's your view on border crossings? Has your view changed on that? It seems like back in the day you thought this thing, and now, maybe, do you still think that?”

You gotta answer that one. In my view — this is where I might feel differently than a lot of Democratic operatives — I'm like, I think people out there in the world have different ideologies and they're all over the map. What they're hunting for is, do you know where you stand with any degree of conviction and can you tell me that you believe that?

Like if Donald Trump was reading a poll, he's not gonna keep saying the election is rigged. Like Mr. President, that's a 30 percent issue. Why are you going out with that? He's like, sorry, I believe it. I'm gonna keep saying it. And then he gets rewarded by people who say, well, I don't agree with him, but he believes what he's saying. So he thinks the election was rigged, but I'm going to look past that and I'm going to look at some other things.

This is why I think a lot of people get too scared of talking, but just give me your orientation. Wherever.
On Gaza, Gaza is a great example. Just give me your orientation. You can be John Fetterman, you can be AOC, you can be Bernie Sanders.

Just tell me what you believe and say it.