The DNC’s Summer Pep Rally
Democrats arrived in Austin amid questions about Ken Martin’s leadership. They left determined not to talk about any of them.
Austin, Texas
BARELY A FEW HOURS INTO THE ANNUAL summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee, chair Ken Martin made one thing abundantly clear: that he has read all of the stories about himself. The one about how he threw a phone in a rage. The one about how he put the DNC’s headquarters up for collateral. The pieces about his struggle to raise money and his mishandling of the 2024 autopsy report.
“You see all these stories about Democrats in disarray and Ken Martin this and Ken Martin that, and all the bullshit they want to focus on,” Martin said at the DNC’s Labor Council meeting. “You know who’s not focused on it? Me! And you shouldn’t be, either.”
At the Rural Council meeting the next day, Martin told the crowd: “You can believe all the bullshit you want about me. I just let it all roll off my back.”
Martin repeated that message throughout the week as he made his way from council meeting to council meeting and privately met with DNC members on the sidelines. And he was hardly alone in his effort to project a sense of above-the-fray confidence.
When I arrived at the Hilton Austin on Thursday morning, Donna Brazile—the former DNC interim chair who recently published an op-ed urging Democrats to stop publicly fantasizing about ousting Martin this close to an election—was holding court with a clutch of young Democrats, exhorting them to stay focused and “do the work!” On her way into Friday’s meeting, Minyon Moore, a longtime Democratic strategist and influential DNC member, told me “everything is wonderful!” and encouraged me to “find the good!” to write about.
Seated at a U-shaped conference table in a cavernous ballroom at the executive committee meeting on Friday, finance chair Chris Korge proclaimed that “in spite of spin that comes out from all kinds of people . . . I want to assure you all that our fundraising efforts are really, quite frankly, on track.” Vice chair Reyna Walters-Morgan stressed that “voters don’t care about the internal squabbles.” And as vice chair Malcolm Kenyatta worked the crowd before the Saturday session, he told me: “Anything good you’ve heard is true, and anything bad you’ve heard is all lies!”
The Austin meeting, the DNC’s last big gathering before the midterms, was full of official business. Most significantly, members approved the new 2028 primary calendar that puts South Carolina’s primary first on January 22, followed by Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia. But the meeting also felt like a giant morale-boosting event intended to rally the troops and quell a nascent rebellion among a minority of DNC members who believe Martin is failing at his job.
Former DNC chair and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe even rescheduled a family golf trip to Ireland to give a rah-rah speech at Saturday’s general session, opening his remarks by talking about his dad, Jack, who he said had a word for when “people spend too much time complaining in our party.”
“He called them ‘lemon suckers.’ His point was: Stop complaining, get up, and actually go do something.”
“I have a message for all of those geniuses and political geniuses out there who constantly go on TV and Twitter—Democrats trashing fellow Democrats, I got a simple message for you: knock it off, or get off the playing field, ’cause we have too much work to do,” McAuliffe continued, as the room of a couple hundred DNC members erupted in applause.
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IN THE WEEKS LEADING UP to the Austin meeting, DNC members told me that the gathering would serve as a gut check on Martin’s future. Assuming Martin does not resign voluntarily—something no one expects he will do—the only way to force him out would be for a majority of the DNC’s roughly 450 members to vote in favor of removing him. And if the reaction to Martin’s defiant “bullshit” lines and McAuliffe’s impassioned calls to quit the complaining are any indication, Martin’s chairmanship is safe.
After a summer marked by turmoil within the party—and not just DNC drama, but the Graham Platner episode, Michigan’s ugly Senate primary, ongoing fights over Israel and AIPAC, panic about the rise of the DSA—it’s clear that there’s a real desire among Democratic leadership to unify and focus their unruly coalition on November.
But that doesn’t mean that everyone bought Martin’s can-do spirit. One DNC member described the Austin gathering to me as giving “North Korean parade vibes.”
Many DNC members and party officials continue to be deeply concerned about the DNC’s financial situation. In private, they worry that there will not be a real coordinated campaign this cycle and lament that the DNC can’t give other party committees financial support, a standard practice in a midterm year. Some top party operatives have told me that they don’t even trust Martin to run a functional voter-protection program. Nor do they have much confidence in his ability to organize the 2028 presidential primary, when there are sure to be thorny intraparty fights on such issues as who makes the debate stage. They often emphasize that Martin has driven the DNC to a place of irrelevance.
But the Austin meeting made clear that those existential questions about the utility and purpose of the DNC would have to wait until after November. The DNC members in attendance had their marching orders.
“Full speed ahead,” Michael Kapp, a DNC member from California, told me as he roamed the maze of the Hilton conference rooms in flip-flops and a t-shirt.
🫏 Donkey Business:
— When Kamala Harris’s super PAC sent out a fundraising email last week in support of Mary Peltola, who is running for Senate in Alaska, they likely thought they were doing her a favor in a tight race that has become one of Democrats’ best pickup opportunities of the cycle. But the New York Times reports that Peltola’s campaign is now distancing itself from Harris, clarifying that it did not seek her endorsement or have any knowledge of the email before it was sent out. Reminder: Harris lost the state in 2024 by 14 percentage points.
There’s been a lot of chatter in Democratic circles lately about how Kamala Harris continues to be the frontrunner in the 2028 presidential primary, especially with South Carolina leading the primary calendar—a state where older black women make up a significant segment of the primary electorate. But the Alaska episode is a reminder of the limitations of Harris’s appeal in states where Democrats are hoping to be more competitive.
— Senate Majority PAC, the party’s most influential super PAC, which is aligned with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, on Friday released a new poll pushing back on the narrative that Abdul El-Sayed has a major electability issue. In the poll of likely voters, El-Sayed leads Republican Mike Rogers by 6 points (50 to 44). The survey credits El-Sayed’s lead to his support among independents (49 points, compared to 40 for Rogers) and Donald Trump’s unpopularity.
— We’re down to the last few weeks of primary contests, with the most-watched races taking place this week in Florida. Rep. Jared Moskowitz is facing a primary challenge from DSA candidate Oliver Larkin in Florida’s newly drawn 25th district. And in the 20th district, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has caused a stir with her decision to seek the nomination for a seat that has been represented by black lawmakers for more than thirty years—a choice she made after the district she lives in and currently represents was broken into five during redistricting.
“It’s a painful situation,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, the Congressional Black Caucus chair, told Politico’s Kimberly Leonard. “To have a beloved colleague who made a decision basically to run in a district where historically there’s been CBC representation, and I know that the community has been really disrupted by it.”
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Well, this is just plain sad. We can't afford to lose to the Republicans in November, but the Democratic leadership doesn't seem to mind if we do. They spent more time complaining about their critics than they did advancing great policy visions or their hopes for the American future.
Of course win or lose it's no skin off their nose: they'll continue to enjoy lucrative speaking gigs and all the other perks of membership in the consultant class, and they'll have plenty of opportunities to go on the morning shows to blame the "lemon-suckers" for their failures--at least, they will until Brendan Carr starts pulling licenses from networks that still have Democrats on the Sunday shows.
They really don't understand the stakes. People like Martin and McAuliffe and Brazile seem to believe that the only real menace we face is that they themselves might lose their hold on power within the Party, such as it is.
Democrats probably spend too much time in a circular firing squad but the only DNC chairs I can name quickly (Schulz, Brazille, Martin) aren't memorable for good reasons. I'm not sure what the solution is right now but I sure wish we could just stick Rahm or Pete in there for a few months to at least look like they're righting the ship.