DNC chair aftermath: "Quick, Adam, to the Batmobile."

Oops.

On Saturday the Democratic National Committee selected a new chairman, and observer Charlie Pierce (a longtime personal favorite) says it's time to move forward.

Perez and Ellison took questions together from the press after the balloting was done and both of them seemed to get along quite splendidly. (They both called for an independent investigation into the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia with equal fervor.) And if the whole exercise this weekend accomplishes nothing else except to lay forever the ghost of the 2016 Democratic primaries and to salt the earth so its poxy memory never rises again, then the DNC Winter Meeting will have done American politics an incalculable good.

Perhaps, especially when there's nothing to see. As a progressive, I'm more inclined to view it like my friend Steve:

Well, now that the CorpoDem Party just committed suicide, what are we going to do for 2018 and 2020?

The answer is alcohol and drugs, though I haven't yet decided which ones, and in what order.

My conclusion: I've spent enough time watching the national party fail and flail, so it's back to the usual time-honored means test, and I'll be looking to the local Democratic Party for signs of an ideological pulse.

There is little indication of content or succor within Adam Dickey's creation, which should make it even easier to continue drinking. As always, I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.

Democrats complete the Sanders purge, thus remaining dead to me.



The Democrats remain dead to me, and the Republicans are dead to me, too. A grand total of two types of soup on offer, and me with my fork.

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Tom Perez Narrowly Defeats Keith Ellison for DNC Chair, by John Nichols (The Nation)

To succeed, Perez must ally with the grassroots activists who are more concerned with principles than with partisanship.

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'Incredibly Disappointing': Democrats Choose Tom Perez to Head Party, by Andrea Germanos (Common Dreams)

DNC 'chose to continue the failed Clinton strategy of prioritizing wealthy donors over the activist base'

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The Wrong Way to Rebuild the Democratic Party, by Leah Hunt-Hendrix (Politico)

Democrats need to embrace a new vision. That means dumping the failed leaders of the past—including David Brock.

Pete Buttigieg for DNC chair? "The Midwestern mayor seems a better bet," says The Economist.

What strikes me as noteworthy about The Economist's assessment is that it devotes almost no ink to Tom Perez, the establishment choice.

Three cheers for at least THAT much.

Who should lead the Democrats after their calamitous defeat? (The Economist)

Pete Buttigieg is pitching himself as the compromise candidate

 ... The tussle between Mr Perez and Mr Ellison, the front-runners among the nine contenders for the job, could be a boon for Pete Buttigieg (pronounced boot-edge-edge), the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana. “We don’t want to relive 2016,” says Mr Buttigieg, alluding to the fierce battles between Mr Sanders and Mrs Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Mr Buttigieg presents himself as the compromise candidate who can bridge the divide between the Sanders and Clinton camps, build alliances with progressive organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and connect with the white working class as well as minorities.

Mr Buttigieg joined the race late, but picked up momentum quickly. He bagged the endorsement of five former DNC chairs as well as nine mayors of cities such as New Orleans and Austin, Texas. Howard Dean, another former DNC chair and former presidential candidate, thinks Mr Buttigieg has a shot at winning. If he were elected, the former Rhodes scholar and Harvard graduate would be the youngest, and first openly gay, chairman of the DNC. He would bring to the job his experiences as mayor, navy officer and nerd at McKinsey, a management consultancy (a CV remarkably like that of Tom Cotton, a Republican senator with big ambitions).

Precinct, trust, communicate ... three strikes and local Democrats are "out," though free to continue pursuing a GOP-style public housing power grab.

Am I bugging you?

The Nation and Elle, right there on the front lines ... and back here in Floyd County, we have Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey, doing the work of good Republicans, while perpetuating the same old monetization-based exclusion of ideas that cost Democrats last fall's election in the first place.

Let's summarize 2017 with a Gahan and Floyd Democratic Party meme and a few essential links.

There's this:

Why We Support Keith Ellison for DNC Chair (The Nation)

He will address the party’s—and the nation’s—crisis by aligning Democrats more closely with movements for social and economic justice.

 ... The Nation enthusiastically endorses Ellison in the contest to lead a DNC that must repurpose itself in order to derail Trump, while at the same time speaking to young voters who won’t settle for anything less than an aggressively progressive opposition party. The job of DNC chair is to build a party that can win elections on every ballot line and in every state. But in an age when party loyalties are weakening, and when movements matter more to tens of millions of Americans than partisan labels, Ellison is ready to build an activist party. In fact, the high-energy congressman (who says he’ll quit his House seat if he wins the DNC post) is already doing that: calling for mass rallies to oppose Trump’s Muslim ban, taking part in those rallies, and then appearing on the Sunday-morning talk shows to rip discriminatory policies as un-American ...

 ... What distinguishes Keith Ellison is his experience as a progressive who has won and won and won again—and who knows that Democrats can turn red states blue by transforming their party into a movement.

And this:

Rep. Keith Ellison on What the Democratic Party Needs to do Right Now, by Melissa Harris-Perry

Three little words, one big objective.

 ... It is hard to imagine an entity in American politics more irrelevant right now than the Democratic Party. This is why the decision that the 447-member body of the Democratic National Committee will make when it meets in Atlanta on February 25to choose its next national party leader is crucial. Officially it is a crowded field of contenders, but in reality a two-man race. One frontrunner is former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez who earned the backing of Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday. Perez is well known and well liked among the existing party leaders. He is a known quantity likely to pursue a strategy very similar to the status quo.

The other front running candidate is Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota. Representative Ellison was elected to the 5th district of Minnesota in 2006. Minnesota's 5th district includes Minneapolis and its suburbs, where immigration, growing racial diversity, class identity, and concerns about economic security mirror those animating current national anxieties. Ellison was the first Muslim and the first African American from the state of Minnesota elected to the U.S. Congress. If he is chosen to lead the DNC, it will likely represent a substantial change in direction for the national party.