Politico recently described the race for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee as possessing “all the excitement of watching a euchre tournament, full of Midwestern niceness befitting its two frontrunners but short on big ideas or disagreements over how to salvage their fortunes.” Well, that’s about to change.
Former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir has thrown his hat in the ring. Since he’s joining the race just a couple weeks before the DNC’s members vote, it will be a challenge for him to catch the front-runners. But Shakir’s entry is significant nonetheless: Unlike most of his competitors, he wants to transform the party.
There is a consensus among Democrats that losing to Donald Trump two out of three times and hemorrhaging working-class voters to a plutocrat represents an existential crisis.
Shakir’s résumé spans multiple key sectors of the Democratic Party. He’s worked closely with the upper echelons of the party establishment, serving as an aide to former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He also had high-profile posts at the Center for American Progress, the premier think tank affiliated with the center-left party establishment. But he’s also worked in the left wing of the party, most notably managing Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. That campaign was far from perfect, but Sanders came close to winning the Democratic presidential primaries, losing only after the moderate wing of the party consolidated behind Joe Biden. He also served as political director of the American Civil Liberties Union and is currently the executive director of More Perfect Union, an advocacy journalism nonprofit that describes its mission as “building power for the working class.”
Why is he entering so late? “As I have listened to our candidates, I sense a constrained, status-quo style of thinking. We cannot expect working class audiences to see us any differently if we are not offering anything new or substantive to attract their support,” Shakir wrote in a letter to the 448 members of the DNC.
Shakir elaborated on this class-focused politics in an interview with The New York Times. He argued that the party’s brand was fundamentally “broken” and warned that “if we can’t have a bold debate about these issues — it’s now or never.” The Times reported that Shakir’s “mission would be to redefine the Democratic Party as the party of the working class — including by reaching beyond the typical confines of campaigns, such as organizing to support striking workers.”
Shakir’s instincts are right. There is a consensus among Democrats that losing to Donald Trump two out of three times and hemorrhaging working-class voters to a plutocrat represents an existential crisis. Yet the top candidates vying to lead the DNC are not acting like it. As Politico reported, the two most prominent candidates, Wisconsin Democratic Party boss Ben Wikler and Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Chair Ken Martin, have focused on “technocratic squabbles over party mechanics and the individual candidates’ resumes rather than some of the larger ideological and policy debates.” The race has become centered around personality and candidate quality instead of the million-dollar question: What is to be done?
The progressive wing of the party has the best chance at helping Democrats win back the working class and shed the party’s reputation as defender of the status quo. Party elders, whose own answers haven’t worked, are finally admitting that economic populism is a necessary part of the solution. Center-left voices are worried that the Democratic Party has become an overly diffuse coalition of disparate interest groups that can push agendas at odds with the demands of mass politics.
Shakir isn’t the only candidate in the race from the left wing of the party: Former Democratic presidential candidate and wellness author Marianne Williamson is also running. But Williamson has no experience in professional politics, and her eccentric and problematic beliefs about health make her a poor messenger for the left.
A DNC chair who understands the importance of class-first politics could help reorient the party. The position oversees an organization that helps Democratic candidates with research, polling, ads and fundraising, not to mention making media appearances and formally laying out the party platform. As a result, the chair has substantial influence on the party’s messaging, organizing and spending priorities.
Shakir’s belated entry into the race and more recent anti-establishment credentials mean he’s likely a long-shot candidate. But the ideas he’s pushing deserve a wide audience within the party, and one hopes they help spark a broader debate and serious answers from those vying to lead it.
