The Way Forward

In your statement announcing your plan to run for chair of the DNC, you said that you believe the central job of the chair is to change how Democrats are perceived by voters. How are Democrats perceived by voters right now?

I believe a lot of working-class people out there hold the Democratic Party to a different standard than the Republican Party, and quite frankly, it’s a higher standard. That means they feel like when there’s great wealth and income inequality in society, when billionaires are ruling, when there are major fights depriving them of economic freedom in all different kinds of places—whether it’s in the workplace, or as a consumer, or small businesses getting crunched by monopolists—when you have that going on in society, they’re expecting and wanting a fighter who sticks their neck out with us and for us.

I draw the metaphor to unions. When you get out there and you talk to some workers who are on a strike and they’re upset about contract negotiations, sometimes they’ll be angrier at their union head than they will be at the company. “The head of the company only cares about their bottom line. That’s the way they operate,” a worker might say. “My union head is supposed to stick up for me. That’s their job.” And in that way, they get angry. That’s what I sense is going on with a lot of working class people here as we’ve become a party spending less time prioritizing [the] economic justice message that is the historical lineage of our party, it has caused people to check out and stay at home. As a result, I think we have a very weak and struggling Democratic brand.

But Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester did that in 2024 and still lost. Brown’s loss especially stands out; his opponent was a luxury car salesman who was sued by a bunch of his workers over allegations of discrimination and wage theft.

You’re absolutely right. My analysis of that election cycle is they over-performed over the Democratic brand. What hurt them? The Democratic brand. At some point, you’re trying to swim above water aggressively as much as you can, until that anchor is just pulling you down underneath.

Tester and Brown are the best examples of that in the last election cycle. Even look at Dan Osborne [an independent Senate candidate running in Nebraska with quiet support from Democrats], who lost his race. He didn’t run under the Democratic banner, but you can look at his over-performance. Don’t just look at the W’s and L’s. The major takeaway was that these guys were way over-performing [the national Democratic ticket].