Democrats Need To Pick a Leader. Now.

[portlander23]

Democrats Need To Pick a Leader. Now.
Jeet Heer
New Republic

The time is ripe for a concerted, coherent opposition to Trump even before he’s inaugurated. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is facing this national crisis leaderless. The hunger among liberals for an oppositional stance is strong—you can see it, among other things, in the grassroots protest of Trump’s elevation of Bannon to the position of chief counsel (which has resulted in a flood of phone calls and letters to members of Congress), as well as the success of Green Party Leader Jill Stein in raising money for her efforts to recount the vote in three key states.

Significantly, both of those efforts are taking place outside the Democratic Party (although 169 congressional Democrats have signed a letter denouncing the Bannon appointment). They are flourishing in part because of the leadership gap on the Democratic side: President Obama is constrained by norms governing how a president treats his successor; Hillary Clinton by norms that dictate a defeated candidate keep a low profile; and the next head of the Democratic National Committee won’t be picked till the end of February.

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have taken the lead in denouncing Trump since his stunning election. Sanders has been particularly valuable in calling Trump’s bluff on economic populism; on Thursday he criticized Trump’s vaunted saving of jobs at the Carrier plant in Indiana as a fraud, tweeting: “Carrier gets millions in tax breaks. Indiana loses thousands of jobs. United Technologies took Trump hostage and won.” In a similar vein, Warren denounced the pick of Steve Mnuchin as Treasury secretary by calling him “the Forrest Gump of the financial crisis,” who “managed to participate in all the worst practices on Wall Street.” She went on: “He spent two decades at Goldman Sachs, helping the bank peddle the same kind of mortgage products that blew up the economy and sucked down billions in taxpayer-bailout money before he moved on to run a bank that was infamous for aggressively foreclosing on families.”

Warren ... is perfectly suited to be leader of the opposition to Trump. I’m not the first to suggest this. On the most recent episode of their podcast Keepin’ It 1600, former Obama advisors Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer bantered and worried over the Democrats’ leadership vacuum. Favreau lamented that “because Hillary is running around in the woods all day” and “Barack Obama has to play nice with Donald Trump,” Democrats were left with just Schumer and Pelosi. “Are those the only voices out there?” he asked. “I don’t know what to do here.” Pfeiffer responded: “This is a real challenge. I think Elizabeth Warren is going to have to be a very important voice. What you need is someone who has either the national stature or the leadership position to get press coverage, and you need somebody who can deliver a compelling message and is a compelling messenger.”

[msongs]

1. so which dem is next to visit trump tower and grovel at his daughter's feet nt

[yeoman6987]

2. The mayor of DC goes to trump tower tomorrow or went today.

The group going in and out of trump tower is a mix of everyone.

[yallerdawg]

3. I'm going to be watching for which Democrat...

gets outrageously attacked, demonized and vilified by the right and the M$M.

That'll tell me who they fear the most!

Keith Ellison sure seems to be getting a lot of attention.

[loyalsister]

4. No thanks

LeaderS with complimentary skills and shared goals needs to emerge. Particularly at state and local levels. "Picking a leader is authoritarian and exactly what we don't need when we have such geographic and demographic divisions.

[gulliver]

5. Nope. A single leader now is a bad idea.

First, it's impossible to get a single leader fast. There's no Earthly process by which one can emerge. The obvious choice would be Obama, but not as "leader." I hope he takes up the cause, not as "the" leader of the Dem opposition but as lead organizer of a movement of many leaders. He could start it and participate in it, but it would need to take on a life of its own.

One leader right away is an inherently unstable design. It needs to be multiple leaders to account for the range of factions who, although they share a strong core of common thinking, would not be willing to coalesce around a single leader right away. A single leader also gives the opposition a single target for destruction, a single point of failure for us. Unfortunately, we can't give the Republican opposition an easy, early target like we did with Hillary. The level of chicanery on their side and the uselessness of the media in the presence of it means we need a broad base of leadership.

The movement has to come first, multiple leaders building trust among themselves and the various factions. The candidates at all levels emerge from that.