Candidates seeking to lead the Democratic National Committee were eager to move beyond President Joe Biden‘s tenure and focus on revamping the Democratic Party as President-elect Donald Trump is set to take power.
At a DNC and Politico candidate forum in Detroit, the Democrats vying to become the next chair dodged questions about whether Biden should have dropped out earlier after he was forced to exit the race in July paving the way for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Seven candidates participated in the forum, including Wisconsin state party Chairman Ben Wikler, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party leader Ken Martin, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Quintessa Hathaway, Nate Snyder, former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, and Jason Paul.
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“It’s an academic exercise that’s not even worth answering because we can’t change the past,” Martin, one of the leading contenders, said in response to Dasha Burns’s question on whether Biden should have decided to run again. “The only thing we can do is focus on the future, and that’s the lessons that I’m interested in learning from this last election. It does none of us any good to hypothesize about what could have happened if Joe Biden dropped out earlier because we can’t. It’s not going to help inform the future.”
Wikler, another top contender in the race, similarly dodged the question about Biden.
“I will say we’re four days away from Trump’s inauguration. And look we can disagree about all kinds of things, but the fundamental question is what do we do now,” Wikler said. “And what we need to do is we need to unite and fight for working people against an administration that is going to try to divide us, and rip us all off.”
Williamson, who challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination last year, bemoaned the primary process, which she claimed was rigged in Biden’s favor.
“The problem was the DNC saying … ‘Oh, we are not going to have a primary. And we see our role as supporting the president’s renomination.’ Once again, in contradiction to their own bylaws,” Williamson said. “And the fact that so many traditional Democratic voters went along with this, we used to be the party of the free thinkers.”
Perhaps the most spirited moment of the more than 90-minute forum came when Paul blasted the media for allegedly hampering Biden’s legislative victory.
“Our problem is we trusted you all. Your job was to inform the American people about what was going on in this country. But instead of informing the American people about what’s going on, you asked the same kind of gotcha questions that I am so sick and tired of hearing from journalists in this country,” Paul said as the audience clapped in approval.
“Joe Biden did a good job as president. He got good things done, and none of you ever said it because you wanted to ask, ‘What’s wrong with Joe Biden today?” Paul continued.
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In contrast, candidates vying for vice chair of the DNC were more direct in saying Biden should have dropped out sooner.
“Anybody who did say that he needed to step aside or thought that he did, even with respect, was immediately ostracized, and it was a huge problem for the party,” candidate David Hogg told moderator Holly Otterbein. “We are not a cult. We should not be a cult.”
The forum for the DNC chair mostly saw the seven candidates rail against consultants while vowing to win back working-class voters and voters of color who shifted toward Trump during the November election.
Although several candidates said they were more focused on rebuilding the Democratic coalition than resisting Trump, they did not hesitate to attack the president-elect.
“Donald Trump’s twisted talent is tapping into the fears that we have of tomorrow,” O’Malley said. “Sometimes we’ve fallen into the trap of trying to scare people more about Trump than Trump already is scaring them about tomorrow. We need to remember that we’re the party that tells one another that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
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“We have to do a better job when it comes to messaging in the party,” said Hathaway when asked by Politico’s Eugene Daniels about how the party moves beyond resisting Trump in 2025. “We can’t just always be on defense. We have to project a message, a vision that casts the net wide for as many people as possible to come into our tent and onto our shores.”
The first DNC forum was hosted over the weekend in a virtual format that focused on the South. Two more forums will occur before DNC members vote on a chair on Feb. 1.
