The DNC chairman’s race reveals much about the party

Even though it is proceeding mostly out of view, the race for the chairman of the Democratic National Committee is important and it says something about the transformation of the Democratic Party. The phenomenon of Bernie Sanders during the 2016 campaign made it clear that the Democratic Party has fully abandoned the Clinton era. Hillary Clinton was the last gasp of an era and not the beginning of anything. Traditional Democratic policies and the cerebral, leftist character of the Obama administration have left the Democrats unfulfilled. Now, it looks as though there is an appetite for angry, full-bore liberalism that is essentially anti-capitalist.

One of the favorite candidates to become the next DNC chairman, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), is so far to the left that he is actually having to try to clean up some of his radical past statements and actions. It’s a bad sign that he is trying to appear more moderate by relying on feature stories in publications like Mother Jones to tidy up his record. But the highlights of Ellison’s career can’t be easily disguised. He was associated with radical leader of the Nation of Islam Louis Farrakhan, previously defended the anti-Semitic views of Farrakhan and has fully embraced the Black Lives Matter movement.

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