Posted on Monday, February 3, 2025

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by Shane Harris

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On the heels of sweeping defeats for the Democrat Party up and down the ballot last November, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) held leadership elections over the weekend to install new officers. However, the biggest winners from those contests might well prove to be conservatives and the America First wing of the Republican Party.

After Democrats lost the House in 2022 and then the Senate and the White House in 2024, the writing was on the wall for now-former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison. But the selection of Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chairman Ken Martin as Harrison’s replacement offers little indication that Democrats have learned anything from their defeats – or that they are even willing to acknowledge that they have any problems when it comes to holding together their rapidly fraying coalition.

Rank-and-file Democrats hoping for a new direction for the party were no doubt horrified to read Politico’s reporting of the proceedings. According to the outlet, Martin, who notably served as vice chair of the Kamala Harris campaign, “said during his campaign for chair that the party already has ‘the right message.’”

As anyone with a firm grasp of reality can tell you, the results from the ballot box hardly support that analysis. In 2024, Democrats lost ground with voters under 30, Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks – all key factions of the Democrat Party coalition. Compared to 2016, Donald Trump saw an eye-popping 42-point gain with Hispanics in Michigan. In Nevada, he gained a whopping 52 points with Asians compared to his 2020 performance.

Clearly, Democrats have a big problem with their message. Yet even the other frontrunner for the DNC’s top post, Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, was not promising “a major overhaul of the party.”

Even more alarmingly for liberals, Politico also reports that Kamala Harris “privately called the three front-runners” before the election and “told each that she looked forward to working ‘closely with the winning candidate as soon as they are elected.’” In other words, it doesn’t appear as if Kamala Harris is going anywhere – and she may even be gearing up for another presidential run in 2028.

That’s more bad news for Democrats. In 2023, Harris set a record as the least popular vice president in modern history. Despite an all-out effort from the Democrat establishment and corporate media to sell Harris as the second coming of Barack Obama, she lost the popular vote to Trump, did not win a single swing state, and even lost ground to Trump in every state that both she and Biden won.

No one embodies the failures of the modern Democrat Party more than Kamala Harris. In 2020, Harris dropped out of the Democrat presidential primary before the Iowa Caucuses because she was polling at less than one percent. After promising to choose a woman, Joe Biden picked her as his running mate.

Harris went on to serve a dismal three years in office before an 11th-hour switcheroo bypassed Democrat voters to substitute her as the Democrats’ nominee for president instead of Joe Biden. She then became the first Democrat presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote since 2004.

The fact that Harris is still viewed as a leader of the party speaks volumes about the party’s commitment to identity politics at the expense of winning elections and delivering a message that resonates with everyday voters.

But it wasn’t just the elevation of Ken Martin and Kamala Harris that showed how out-of-touch Democrats are. The party also selected David Hogg as one of three vice chairs.

Hogg, a 24-year-old survivor of the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, rose to prominence as an anti-gun activist. He has since become a crusader for enforcing far-left ideological purity within the Democrat Party more generally, including funding primary challenges to Democrats from swing districts.

Last year, for instance, Hogg celebrated the defeat of Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola, writing “good riddance” in a post on X responding to news of her loss. “Turns out being weak on gun control doesn’t save you,” he added.

Hogg also sold himself as someone who can win back young voters, particularly young men, for Democrats. “We have to win back our young people,” Hogg said during his speech before the DNC. “I am the only candidate in this race for any of these positions who is under 30… We must show our young people that we give a damn about them, that we support them, and that we invest in them.”

But the suggestion that Hogg is the right person to win back men and young voters for Democrats was met with outright mockery from conservatives online. “On behalf of all Republicans, David Hogg has our full endorsement,” Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips sarcastically posted on X. “Nothing against David Hogg one way or another, but I would humbly submit that an Ivy League educated nice-hair guy who is most famous for being America’s leading gun control advocate is probably not the person best equipped to help Dems win back working-class men in swing states,” writer Tyler Harper added.

All in all, the DNC elections proved that Democrats learned nothing from last November’s shellacking – and unless they change course soon, they can expect more defeats in the years ahead.

Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.