Why did Keith Ellison lose the DNC race?

[brooklynite]

Washington Post:

As one of just two reporters who went to every DNC forum — the other was Nomiki Konst, a Young Turks reporter who will also serve on the DNC's “unity commission” to change the primary system — I saw angst about this reaction building for weeks. I also saw why 235 DNC members decided to back Perez. Had the race been shorter, Ellison might well have won. But a few converging factors blunted his momentum — and they weren't the factors that got the most coverage.

DNC members were not ready to reject the Obama legacy. The basic critique of Bruenig et al is right: The leadership of the Democratic Party, nationally and in most states, has resisted acknowledging the failures of the Obama years. Brazile opened the first of the party's four “future forums” by telling Democrats that the DNC “failed you” in 2016 and “got cocky about our invincible blue wall.”

But for Brazile and other Democrats, the death blows to the party's 2016 campaign were struck by Russian hacking and by FBI Director James B. Comey. They have little time for the activists who say that the Democratic primary between Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Hillary Clinton was “rigged” — the “evidence,” the establishment wing says, comes from emails hacked from the DNC and the Clinton campaign and released at damaging times to divide the party. (This is separate from the issue of then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz scheduling only a few, late party presidential debates, which even Perez criticized. When he stumbled and appeared to say that the primary had been “rigged,” he explained that he was talking only about the debates.)

Perez closed the ideological gap in the party, and Ellison let him. In late 2004, when Howard Dean entered the race to run the DNC, some Democratic leaders put forward a candidate of their own — former congressman Tim Roemer of Indiana, a centrist who had served on the 9/11 Commission. It was a debacle, with progressives picking over Roemer's spotty record on abortion rights and Social Security. The candidate quit within weeks.

As this year's “establishment” candidate, Perez posed almost no ideological challenge to Ellison or Sanders voters, or the party platform they had helped to write. (Ellison served on the 2016 platform committee.) He broke with them on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, as a member of the Obama administration, he supported. But when he did so, he always posited TPP as an improvement on deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he'd opposed.

[Gothmog]

1. Good Article

[ck4829]

2. Was this race tainted by right wingers like Alan Dershowitz and WorldNutDaily with their screeds?

If we're going to keep revisiting this, then this question needs to be asked.

[MosheFeingold]

10. Alan is not a "right winger"

He's intellectually consistent liberal to a fault and unable to compromise on certain things. In short, he's a liberal version of Ted Cruz. He's a "lawful progressive" like Cruz is a "lawful conservative" to put it in ancient Dungeons & Dragons terms.

Ellison allegedly said certain pretty horrid things about women and Jewish people. He hung out with some pretty sketchy people who are not remotely progressive.

I personally don't believe Ellison said them and, even if he did, he said them when he was a stupid kid. So I don't care.

But to a pure-bred liberal like Alan, they were a deal killer.

Now, I disagree with Alan, but that doesn't make him conservative.

[Blue_Tires]

11. You do realize the "Reversal of Fortune" lefty Dershowitz is long dead, right?

I suggest you do some reading up, since he made his hard right turn after 9-11, iirc

[MosheFeingold]

13. Nonsense

What he's done is stand up to the antisemitic creeps (in which group I do not put Ellison) who are attempting to infiltrate the left under false colors.

Apparently, this is considered "right wing" now.

[Mosby]

16. Dersh is a proud Zionist

For some that means he can't be progressive.

As for Ellison, an apology doesn't make up for decades of pandering to Antisemites like farrakan. That recording from 2010 and his votes against Israel (like the defensive iron dome system he voted against) showed his true colors.

[QC]

15. Shhhhhh....must not talk about the Islamophobia. n/t

[NCTraveler]

3. Because he was up against some great people.

I don't see this as a statement on Ellison and it was never his job to start. Democrats should all be walking away from this very happy. We had a good field interested in the position and a great person as chair. Win/Win/Win. As for Ellison, I really think he would have won had the BoB'ers not attached themselves to him. They have become extremely toxic and Ellison deserves better.

[JI7]

4. yes. it mostly has to do with Obama

It was obama people who got perez to run and Obama is very popular and influential within the party.

[randome]

9. Plus Obama is "within the party" -which gives him an enormous advantage over an outsider.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]

[Me.]

5. Some Thoughts

I think it didn't help that some of his very vocal backers scared off people...for instance Sarandon's weird interview and endorsement on Chris Hayes as well as Weaver getting on MSNBC and making threats about him not being elected. Then there was that last minute tweet that falsely claimed Mayor Pete's endorsement. Up until then the race was close and could've gone either way.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Bottom line-- who cares? Are we going to analyze every decision and get nothing done? We have...

a whole country to energize and the last thing we need to do is split over this. Have we learned nothing from last year?

The two of them shook hands and told us to get on with things.

Let's do that and win some elections.

[NurseJackie]

7. Because toxic people like Sarandon endorsed him?

[ck4829]

8. Toxic people like Dershowitz didn't though

So I think there is another issue here.

[Blue_Tires]

12. Who cares, let's move on already

99% of Dems (myself included) couldn't name the last 5 DNC chairs without looking it up, anyway...

Although I am intrigued to see how many non-Dems followed, regularly commented, and tried to influence this inconsequential race...

[Starry Messenger]

14. Anyone who takes Bruenig seriously, as Weigal does here, is hard to give credence to.

Ellison lost because Sanders hung around him like a boat anchor--and the chatter that an Ellison win would be the door prize for Berners who didn't get their way in the Primary probably didn't help either. People are sick of the ultimatums.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/sanders-revolution-resists-dnc-loss-235404

The next day, when Harrison threw his support to former Labor Secretary Tom Perez instead, Ellison supporters worked off talking points and attacked Harrison as a corporate lobbyist insider who’d struck a crooked deal that didn’t pass their purity test.

New York Rep. Gregory Meeks had his own showdowns with the Sanders-inspired coalition. One of the few sitting members of Congress who had a vote in the DNC election here Saturday, Meeks was repeatedly threatened by supporters of Ellison and Sanders with a primary challenge if he backed anyone else.