David Axelrod On Tom Perez And The Future Of The Democratic Party

[NCTraveler]

AXELROD: You know, what was interesting about it is that you're absolutely right. They were supported by different power bases within the party. But when you - they had a long campaign. And during that campaign, very few differences emerged. And, in fact, there was some unanimity of thinking about what was needed. And what is needed is to rebuild the party from the bottom up. The Republican Party now controls 32 legislatures, 33 governorships, obviously, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

And there is a sense that there needs to be a 50-state strategy rebuilding the party from the bottom up. And both Perez and Ellison promised to do that. And at the end, despite this heated campaign for leadership, they seemed to come together. Ellison is accepting a role as deputy chair. And they locked arm in arm and marched forward. But there's a lot of work to be done here.

AXELROD: You know, that's the - that will be his task, to try and unify the party. Tom Perez is quite progressive. So it's not as if, philosophically, there's a big leap for him to relate to these rank-and-file Democrats who were for Ellison. I think one of the concerns that they had was that they felt that the process was stacked against Bernie Sanders, who supported Ellison and whom Ellison supported in the primaries last year. And one thing that Perez has done is reassure everyone that the process will be straight and transparent. And he needs to live by that in order to reassure these voters. But there's going to be this debate, which is - how do you approach Donald Trump?

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/26/517305298/david-axelrod-on-tom-perez-and-the-future-of-the-democratic-party

[zipplewrath]

1. What does he know

Considering that Axelrod is one of the gang that left us in the worst shape the democratic party has been in since reconstruction, I'm not sure I can care all that much about his point of view. Quite honestly, it'd bother me just a little bit if he agreed with the direction the party is taking.

[MineralMan]

2. He's right, though. There's very little difference between

Perez and Ellison in terms of issues and strategy. Maybe we should give Perez a chance? Unless you know something about him that is shows him as anything but progressive, I think that's really a good idea. To defeat Trump and his allies, we're going to need to stand together solidly.

To me, Ellison and Perez were both well-qualified for the job. Now, they'll both be involved. Seems like a win-win proposition to me.

[zipplewrath]

5. I didn't write about Perez

I wrote about Axelrod, but your blinders were on again I see.

[NCTraveler]

8. Axelrod was writing about Perez. Guess you didn't notice.

Why such a rude response to a well thought out reply?

[zipplewrath]

9. I did

And I commented that I didn't really put much stock into what Axelrod had to say. To which I was replied with an admonition to give Perez a chance. Which totally missed the point and made assumptions about me which were not true.

Not a really well thought out response.

[NCTraveler]

10. +1

Agree and already stated.

[Hekate]

7. Sounds good to me. Getting back to the 50 state strategy (& writing it into the By-Laws forever)...

...and unification sounds like a plan. (I mean in my deepest hopes the DNC would make the 50 state strategy a permanent feature.)

I never knew until last week that Tom Perez worked as a garbage collector to pay for his Ivy League education. That's definitely harder than what I did, which was to clean houses and sales clerk my way thru a public university. I knew quite a few students working part time at UH, so there was zero social stigma involved. At an Ivy League college ... that is probably not the case.

Tom Perez gets a lot of credit from me for that piece of his CV.

[uponit7771]

3. BULL FUCKIN SHIT !!! Gerrymandering and voter suppression !!!!

[zipplewrath]

4. Right

Because that's never existed before. And he and the gang worked so hard on that issue for the last 8 years.

[DeminPennswoods]

6. Yeah, a bit of a disengenousness on seats lost

I can only speak for my state, Pennsylvania, but the re-districting used to be bi-partisan and both state and federal districts were fairly regular looking, but that all changed under Perzel when he was speaker of the state house. First the legislative, then the federal CDs were heavily gerry-mandered as the state began to lose seats in congress from the census. My CD in fact runs in a narrow strip from Lawrence county to Johnstown. It's ridiculous. My state house district is similarly gerry-mandered to cut out almost all the Dem voting towns/areas. Yet in Nov, Dems swept all the state row offices (for the second straight cycle) and the year before won every judicial race. Not only that, but Corbett was the first sitting gov in decades not to win re-election, losing to Tom Wolf. In fairly and/or compactly drawn districts, the current R partisan advantage would be much less or even possibly non-existent.

[Cha]

12. Exactly.. Don't give the repubs any credit at all .. it's all

the Dems fault.

[Cha]

11. the "gang".. all you have are baseless rude insults.

[NurseJackie]

13. #Sad

[zipplewrath]

14. "All I have"

All I have is a democratic party in the worst shape than it's been since reconstruction. But I know, we shouldn't hold the people that have lead the party for the last 24 years responsible at all. That'd be rude.