Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin will call for DNC officials’ neutrality to be codified in the party’s official rules and bylaws, two Democratic sources tell CNN. Martin has already been telling DNC members of his plans and will explain more in a call with members Thursday afternoon.
. . . “No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election, whether on behalf of an incumbent or a challenger,” Martin told reporters on a call Thursday. “Voters should decide who our primary nominees are, not DNC leadership.”
The DNC’s Rules & Bylaws committee is expected to vote on Martin’s proposal next month in a virtual meeting. If the committee approves the proposal it will advance to a full vote of the DNC membership in August.
The push for the new rule comes days after Hogg, who beat out a crowded field to become one of three DNC at-large vice chairs in February, announced his plan to help primary incumbent Democrats in safe districts through his group Leaders We Deserve. The organization plans to spend a total of $20 million in next year’s midterms supporting young people running for office.
Hogg stressed that his effort would not target Democrats in competitive districts or use any DNC resources, including voter files or donor lists. He told CNN in an interview last week that he would not endorse in the presidential primaries if he is still a DNC leader.
“I don’t take it personally,” Hogg said of the criticism of his primary challenge. “There’s a difference in strategy here, and the way that we think things need to be done.”
No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election
Yeah, the DNC would never do that.
Looking at YOU 2016…
uh huh.
if bernie actually did the work to attract me actual base of the party, which by the way are not college age kids but black people, specifically black women, he would not have lost the primary.
and since that election he had another 4 years to work on his extreme deficit with black voters, but had zero outreach with that cohort. instead he doubled down on the youth vote.
that’s not a strategy to win a primary. but it’s a perfect strategy to try to split off young voters into not supporting the democratic choice in the future. and not shutting down conspiracy theories about rigged primaries doesn’t help either. what it does is create distrust where there shouldn’t be, fracture the party to turn against itself instead of the real threat which is the republican party, and in fact increase the chances that republicans win in greater margins because the super bernie side refuses to be smart and do damage limitation by not voting for the viable non republican candidate.
and by the way a few additional things that need to be considered:
- if he wants the democratic nomination, why doesn’t he formally join the party? what he was asking for has been equal access to resources without a full commitment to the party. you all would rightfully object if I declared I’m running for president as a democrat even though I’m a registered non partisan. what makes him any different from me as far as the party is concerned?
- it really is rich how you are all upset about the democrats (allegedly) putting the thumb on the scale for a candidate so now there is a pledge that all people in dnc leadership have to agree to that formally states that leadership will be neutral in all party races from now on. so which is it, you don’t want the dnc influencing races or do you not want the voters in the districts to decide who their candidates should be without party influences?
- you also all think that the super progressive democratic candidate will play everywhere in the country. sure, it may work where I live. but I’m a blue® dot in a state trump won by 31 points. you have to run candidates that will win and super liberals in places like appalachia, oklahoma, or wyoming would consider it a good race if they lost by 50 points.
what it seems like to me is that what the vast majority of people here want is to destroy the democratic party from the ground up in the name of a stupid purity test the vast majority of the party does not agree with, and they want to do it while the most dangerous, insane person who is also the head of a violent cult is in the white house. you’re trying to make your own left wing cult with either bernie or aoc as the head and the rest of the party is not with that.
as I said above I’m not a registered democrat. I find myself politically closer to aoc and bernie. and I’M telling y’all that following and supporting hogg’s move will end the democratic party or any viable non republican party for generations.
Black women are not the base of the party, that’s a common misconception.
In 2023, just 14.4% of the US population identified as black. Women are just over 50% of that.
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224#PST045224
So Just over 7% of the US population are black women. You don’t win elections catering to 7% of the population. Even if they all vote for you, which they won’t, a party can’t survive on 7%.
The Democratic party represents 45.1 million people out of 186.5 million people registered to vote. 24.18% of the voting population.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-affiliation/
No no. See the Democrats need to only hyper focus on specific groups or even just specific counties in states cause their brother they paid 3 million dollars to to consult on their campaign said their intern ran a computer model and decided that was a group they could pick up more votes in. And don’t you know hyper specific identity politics is clearly more superior to general pro-citizen policies that would support a wider populace cause aiming for a wide audience is something only Republicans can do.
We just have to be excited for the flavor of the week getting their extra attention and hyper specific to the point of unhelpful policies if we vote DNC.
Pictures of Bernie getting arrested protesting for civil rights contrasted with Biden’s fight against school integration should have been enough to put that to rest. But people are going to believe what they believe. If the fact that the DNC is corrupt, had a lawsuit they won about not being open (kind of like that Fox News lawsuit where they didn’t have to report the truth), and that the DNC bullshit has been a factor in getting that orange fuckhead elected twice isn’t enough, I’m not sure where to go from there.
Don’t forget 2020
And 2022. They did ad buys for republican candidates in the primaries and then gleefully announced that they had no money for progressive candidates in the general.
*No tag-backs
Yeah I would second the view, if it weren’t for decades of the opposite of the DNC bending over backwards for it’s incumbants. If they had a history of staying neutral and not regularly backing the incumbents. But as they do… then the opposite needs to happen.
I wouldn’t mind then backing the incumbents, if the incumbents had any fucking spine to stand up to the Republicans.
well yeah… backing should be merit based not seniority based. You’ve been there 30 years, and no one knows what the hell you are doing, you’ve not fought for anything we want. Get lost… if you’re still backing good policies, standing up for what’s right and making people happy, stick around as long as you want.
A bit of why I fear the general concept of term limits. Bernie sanders is still far and away one of the best in congress. He’s old as fuck, been there forever… but easilly in the top 5 most active senators…
Yeah I would second the view, if it weren’t for decades of the opposite of the DNC bending over backwards for it’s incumbants.
For centrist incumbents. Henry Cuellar gets protection. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman do not.
Pretty sure they got the memo
They did not get the memo; they saw a credible effort to threaten their chokehold on national politics and want to shut it down on a technicality. There’s literally no reason to believe this is an act of good faith; if it was they wouldn’t have elected Hoggs to the position of DNC vice chair in the first place.
Debbie NEVER Could’ve
This is the same DNC fucks that did this?
Fuck off with you request for ‘Neutrality Now’.
“Let me be clear, this is not about shielding incumbents or boosting challengers,” Martin said.
Liar liar pants on fire. These people are so steeped in their own bullshit that they can’t even recognize how full of crap they truly are. I’d be willing to bet if this guy could reverse AOC’s win in the primary in her district in New York he would do so.
They say the DNC shouldn’t be choosing candidates, but that’s exactly what they want. The system is designed put establishment candidates in place, and keep them there.
As a registered democrat (though only because my state requires it to vote in primaries for democrats and I’m certainly not voting republican): pound sand, DNC.
“Voters should decide who our primary nominees are, not DNC leadership.” Since when has the DNC not put it’s thumb on the scales in the past few decades, or ignored the voters entirely?
DNC thumbing the scales is why we ended up with Trump twice. cause they kept insisting on running candidates no one wanted.
DNC: “Fuck Bernie, it’s her turn.”
Given that you’ve got about 100 years to play with - who else besides HRC did they put their thumb on the scale for?
Please show your work.
1968? There were literally riots
The loss was perceived to be the result of Johnson and Daley influencing behind the scenes. Humphrey, who had not entered any of the thirteen state primary elections, won the Democratic nomination shortly after midnight, and many delegates shouted, “No! No!” when his victory was announced
It’s probably easier to count the ones where the DNC didn’t have their thumb on the scale. First, it’s been way less than 100 years since voters even determined who the candidate was; before 1976, primaries were basically just opinion polls, and delegates picked who they wanted regardless of voter input. Also, after the Carter team blamed Ted Kennedy for their loss, the DNC started ostracizing candidates that made primary challenges, so they definitely put their thumb on the scale for incumbents. So off the bat, we’re looking at less than 50 years of primaries, and only in non-incumbent years.
Then the party definitely put its thumb in the scale for Clinton in 2016, Biden in 2020, and they literally just picked Harris in 2024. So, that means that the unbiased primaries would be Carter in '76, Mondale in "84, Dukakis in 88, Clinton in 92, Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004 (though personally I think they kinda did a hit-job on Howard Dean) and Obama in 2008. Out of 12 primaries in over 48 years, 7 have been open and fair contests. About 58% successful in keeping their thumb off the scale.
Oh, the primary that gave us Obama was biased as hell. For Clinton.
It wasn’t enough. The party learned, though. Which is why they’ve been moving towards not even having primaries when they can just shove a centrist at us and order us to vote like they want.
If you look at Alexandria Ocacia Cortez’s primary, when the DNC realized what was happening they tried desperately to undo her primary win. Going so far as to endorse the incumbent Democrat who stayed on the ballot due to a technicality.
These people are not trustworthy at all.
Another example would be Biden’s primary win in 2020. The DNC used the pandemic as an excuse to end the primary process early and just declare Biden the winner. And even before that they were heavily pushing Biden on everyone and doing their best to lock Bernie out of just about every poll they conducted, pretending like had no chance even though he was pulling numbers that were equalling, and even surpassing in places, Biden at the time.
Good examples. Both from ~six years ago and not the original claim of “decades” but good examples.
Love you casually ignoring the people/comments showing even older examples.
I haven’t seen any evidence that Bernie should have won the 2016 primary. He was close by like 8% margin, but he still lost by millions of votes.
Bernie’s loss is seen as a direct result of DWS’s committee fuckery by most people on here. Which is not the same as it being true, it just gets a lot more attention.
It’s the case that he didn’t win enough votes. But I think it was the first time he got such good exposure for a national contest.
Hillary Clinton started with over 500 delegates before even 1 ballot was cast in a primary. And it was widely reported by every news outlet as if she had won some kind of campaign. They failed to mention that those were super delegates, meaning powerful individuals within the party who could cast their own full delegate vote for a candidate. Then she secretly took control of the party’s finances and then her friend, who was the DNC chair, arranged for every debate between her and Bernie to be on Sundays late at night when people wouldn’t be inclined to watch. They pressured the news outlets to downplay Bernie’s victories and over report on Hillary’s. Yes, she won the primary by many delegates, but the effort to lock the nomination up for her was a mafia style fix that undermined the entire democratic process.
And in 2020, when Bernie was gaining a great deal of momentum against Sleepy Joe, they used the pandemic to cancel all the remaining primaries and declare him the winner. The DNC doesn’t have my support and won’t for the foreseeable future. They’ve made this bed with Trump and we’re the ones who are going to have to lie in it. We need a different party. Not the fucking “Green” party either. Cause fuck those neoliberal assholes.
I still remember the DNC talking points, along with the media going along with the bullshit superdelegate fuckery to custom the story at the time, radically changing the race. Bernie was absolutely rat fucked by the DNC. I guess people can argue He Isn’T eVeN a ReAL DemoCrat, true, but that just plays into the fuckery.
I mean, to me that isn’t fuckery. They let an independent run on their primary tickets and he only lost by about 12% margin despite not being perfectly aligned with their platform. Hillary might have had a lot of advertisement money to play with but we also know that outside influences were promoting Bernie on social media to create a spoiler effect.
Hillary might have had a lot of advertisement money to play with but we also know that outside influences were promoting Bernie on social media to create a spoiler effect.
What spoiler effect? He was running for the Democratic nomination, not as a third party candidate. And with a very small number of vocal exceptions, everyone who voted for Bernie in the primaries voted for Hillary in the general. It was her absolute failure to get independents in multiple flyover states that lost her the election. And a huge part of that is her attempt to appeal to republicans. A strategy that also failed spectacularly for Harris in 2024.
The spoiler effect is when a candidate has an effect on the election even without winning. People still say Bernie Sanders should have been president, and yes that would have been a much better outcome, but the fact is that Hillary Clinton winning the general also would have been a much better outcome but those same Bernie Sanders supporters writhe at Hillary’s mere mention even after he endorsed her.
People exist who literally don’t trust the DNC as an establishment because “they did Bernie dirty”. And that is exactly what the Russians and the Tankies wanted to happen. Mission accomplished.
I don’t follow Russian propaganda and I’m not a tankie. And I know for a fact that the DNC did Bernie dirty. And that’s why I don’t trust the DNC. That’s not a problem caused by Bernie, that’s a problem caused by the DNC being a shady organization.
And blaming Bernie for Hillary’s loss in 2016 is just idiotic because Bernie had nothing to do with Hillary losing the general in 2016, that was all on her. She’s the one who failed to get the votes. There may have been vocal Bernie bros who were talking about how they didn’t want to vote for her but most of the people who voted for Bernie in the primaries voted for her in the general. That’s because people who voted in the primary are politically engaged. The problem is that Hillary failed to get those who are not politically engaged on board with voting for her. And the people like you who blame Bernie for her loss are part of the problem not part of the solution. You make excuses for her and you make excuses for Kamala Harris and you make excuses for people like Chuck Schumer and Nancy pelosi who have basically ceded the entire Congress to the Republicans in exchange for keeping the meager power that they currently hold. Because that’s all they care about.
outside influences were promoting Bernie on social media to create a spoiler effect.
Inside influences were promoting Hillary on mainstream media to create a spoiler effect.
You say that like it’s worse lol. Was it unclear that by “outside” I meant “outside of the USA”?
Was it unclear that by “inside”, I meant “inside the DNC”.
Thumb on the scale…? The vote records are public, the primary races haven’t even been close for many decades.
Primary races haven’t been fair for decades.
Disagree, I blame lack of participation.
Am I out of touch?
No, it’s the voters who are wrong.
*gestures to trump in white house
*gestures to the lack of a proper DNC primary
DNC Primaries happen even if you cover your eyes, pal.
Or general systemic failures of the dnc in general
The vote records are public
So is the lawsuit in which democrats successfully argued that they didn’t have to hold honest primaries.
Fascinating stuff.
I am not American (have previously lived in North America for a decade and travelled extensively in the region), but based on my experiences this is a very a good example of how the US centre-right opposition is completely unqualified for any kind of real action. They clearly lack the risk tolerance and gumption to deal with current internal challenges in the country.
Yep! As an American who has been active in local Dem party activity, they need to be rooted out and replaced. It’s really our best hope.
They clearly lack the risk tolerance and gumption to deal with current internal challenges in their country.
I didn’t get that from the article. I thought the article was showcasing some real gumption to change things, something the RNC would never dream of in a million years (or need to).
Respect to David Hogg. I meant this in a more broader perspective.
I am comparing to global examples. One would be Hong Kong. They failed, but they actually were able to shut down the local airport for a short period.
Or say the initial phase of the Syrian revolution. The population openly protested against a brutal regime that was in power for many decades and there were many examples of their brutality.
I specifically chose failed or highly controversial situations (to highlight how a fight for freedom involves scary and painful choices, this is not a movie). From my experience living in the US, I thought local risk tolerance was low. On a certain level, the US is too well off to have the motivation for resistance (be it mass scale ptotest, 10% of pop or more, weekly protest or violent rebellion).
I don’t know how to say it diplomatically, but true fight for freedom doesn’t seem like the American way.
Things will get progressively worse for more Americans soon enough. Those who are hip to the scene already probably can’t accelerate the process of awakening that will come. We are all Cassandra here. It hella sucks.
Economic doldrums if not depression, pandemics and a fragmented response in the coming autumn if not sooner.
Accelerating assaults on due process.
New public enemy groups generated at will.
All them that know can do is build capacity to organize as the general realization emerges. It won’t happen soon enough for my taste. We are trying to redirect a high mass object and even in politics, the physics here is clear.
My plan is to be as social as I know how to be this summer. It’s not escapism. I’m building my network.
Hopefully also getting laid.
The first rule of the rebellion is to be sure that at least the sex is good.
Literally none of this is based off what voters want.
How would the DNC know to put into elections if they aren’t available during the primary?? Do they operate off of vibes and random phone polls?
If voters want to risk losing even more seats to Republicans then you deserve the hell you’re building.
“Neutrality” is just (very thin) cover for supporting the status quo, when what we need is a complete change.
Neutrality is the opposite of what they always get accused of by the people who love to shit on the Dems. So it’s not the status quo. Or it is. But it can’t be both.
People need to make up their minds why they’re mad about it.
But it can’t be both.
Have you considered: People, and especially groups of people, can do more than one thing at once?
Neutrality for thee but not for me. They want neutrality from Hogg, but were delighted with partiality in the opposite direction for decades.
I’m in agreement, honestly, we need to be reducing Republican seats as the singular most important goal. Challenging incumbents isn’t going to do that.
I’m in agreement, honestly, we need to be reducing Republican seats as the singular most important goal. Challenging incumbents isn’t going to do that.
Where were you when AIPAC was buying candidates against Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman? I didn’t see your desire to protect incumbents then.
It was the will of the people then duh.
There’s a reason Republicans gained so many seats in the first place, and it’s because nobody was satisfied with the Democrat program. If your society has a Trump-shaped hole, a Trump will emerge to fill that hole. You can’t remove the Trump without doing something about the hole.
But instead of removing the hole
you’re chiseling at the sides, making the hole bigger? Why no just fill the hole? Why are we trying to fix this problem from the wrong contiguous color region?
you’re chiseling at the sides, making the hole bigger? Why no just fill the hole? Why are we trying to fix this problem from the wrong contiguous color region?
Did you not get the analogy or are you being disingenuous? Because dude that’s obviously not how I meant that. To rephrase: Providing a good political program is a prerequisite for any kind of sustainable change in Washington. When you’re fighting fascism, you’re fighting for the hearts and minds of the people, not for electoral seats. Hogg is going after the former here.
And we do that by promoting progressives that will actually make people want to vote.
Okay but the majority of seats are red in both chambers so theres plenty of room to do that without removing the progressives we have.
Stuff like this is why I left the dem party, they’re only strong opponents to progressives, not conservatives. The best summary I ever saw of them was: GOP: “fascism” DNC: “fascism ✨🏳️🌈”
So the party you went to was what? Is it better?
I just went with independent, which removes me from the “primaries”, but also removed me from all the non-stop text messages and phone calls begging for money to support a party that does little more than shrug non-committaly.
So, no? I’m from the US, I don’t really get a choice in ISP, phone network, or political representative, but boy I sure do get to pick from a number of different cereals.I am more active at the very local level, though, which seems to be the only place an individual can have impact.
Fair enough then. Probably not a good national strategy but personally it sounds ok.
Heres’ the one that I saw:
Is it about the railroad workers strike? Because the Biden Admin did get them their sick days during his term.
Americans haven’t had an honest vote on the shape or priorities of our economy in half a century.
Just the social issue wedges that economy either causes or in some way informs in order to keep us at each other’s throats and not at our shared enemy in their towers and guard gated compounds.
Would you like your crony market capitalism with affirmations ribbons or scapegoats? Freedom!
Example: you know what would cause a lot fewer abortions almost immediately with absolutely no bans from getting one when the woman deems it necessary? A living wage that can support a family. But that’s a non starter, as it would cost our rulers capital, and lower their quarterly ego score estimates.
The situation will continue to decline until collapse or the elevation of an actual leftwing government, and both parties conspire to prevent that from happening.
Despite the naysaying, isn’t this a good thing? Seems the new chair wants impartiality and if codified then should be a wide open contest.
It’s exactly what the Democratic party should want. Just not necessarily the Democrat politicians who may have overstayed their welcome.
Have you considered why they’re doing this now rather than eight years ago? They’re trying to give you the worst of both worlds here, and that aside Hoggs explicitly said he wouldn’t use DNC resources for his project. The party has no business deciding what he does with his other organizations.
Yes, it’s what everyone has been bitching about since HRC got the nomination. But in reality they wanted their preferred candidates to get a leg up, apparently.
I think it’s a lot of hooray-lets-shit-on-the-Dems from the same people that have no idea how to get elected to national office.
The idea of neutrality is exactly what they want; and now they don’t like it, or they think it’s a lie, or it’s exactly what they want and they still can’t bring themselves to say something supportive.
At least the Democratic party is out there planning. Whatever socialist/anarchist/whatever-it-is-people-think-we-need party isn’t doing much and there’s only sixteen months until midterms.
Despite the naysaying, isn’t this a good thing? Seems the new chair wants impartiality
Centrists benefited for decades from partiality. Now that someone else is playing their game the same way they’ve been playing it, they decide that they want to be impartial. I have no faith whatsoever in the party’s interpretation of neutrality. It just means partiality in favor of centrists.
I like how they think of codifying shit when something happens around them or to them.
But don’t ever think to codify things everyone else needed to be codified.
Agree. The Biden Administration (Harris too) could have codified many protections against what Trump said he would do and the things in Project 2025.
They.Did.Nothing.
Oh look. The Dems rolling out the same shit since 2015 thinking it’ll work. They are corporate controlled opposition and nothing more. We need a new party ideally, but Hogg needs support from other members who also are tired of the party being The Washington Generals of well, Washington.
I think the article is saying they’re not doing the same shit. Not doing it in two different ways, even.
And I’m all for electing the best people to get what we want, but Deez Nutz and Jill Stein ain’t gonna get it. Reforming the DNC is our best shot.
Reforming the DNC is our best shot.
Primarying all the useless centrists is the best way to do that. Which is why democrats are losing their shit over this, but were happy to vote for trump’s continuing resolution a few weeks back.
centrists oppose the left and work with the right.
Jill Stein should be nowhere near even the idea of a reform coalition.
100% agree. So what’s the plan?
“No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election, whether on behalf of an incumbent or a challenger,” Martin told reporters on a call Thursday. “Voters should decide who our primary nominees are, not DNC leadership.”… “Let me be clear, this is not about shielding incumbents or boosting challengers,” Martin said. “It’s about voters’ trust in the party, and when we uphold a clear policy of neutrality, we guard against the perception or reality of bias.”
The trust they lost when they argued in court the party has no obligation to keep promises made to constituents? The trust lost when HRC decided propping up djt as the opposition candidate because he’s easy to beat? The trust lost when Joe said, "Nothing will fundamentally change?” The trust lost when Kamala not only shut out Palestinian voices but also backtracked on campaign promises?
Zero. Irony.
