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MINNEAPOLIS — Democrats showed up to their summer meeting this week in the mood to fight.
They were just hoping to avoid a fight with each other.
“We do not have the luxury to fight amongst ourselves while that thing sits in the White House,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told DNC members, chastising the media for covering Democratic “division” instead of threats to democracy.
The three-day meeting of the Democratic National Committee, held to welcome new members and start building the 2028 primary calendar, was the first under new chair Ken Martin. The messy, months-long conflict over former DNC vice chair David Hogg had ended. The party, Martin vowed, was now bringing “a bazooka to a knife fight,” and would no longer “play by the rules” if Republicans broke them.
That meant loud cheers for California Democrats and their effort to counter Republican gerrymandering by passing a new mid-decade map that would delete five GOP congressional seats. And it meant frequent denunciations of “fascism” from Democrats who, in the past, had talked more mildly about the Trump-led opposition.
“This is authoritarianism,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told DNC members. “It’s fascism dressed in a red tie. And we, each of you in this room and all the Democrats throughout this country — we are the only thing standing in his way.”
Democrats had some victories to celebrate, including a Tuesday night win in an Iowa state senate seat that broke the GOP’s legislative supermajority. Martin gave some credit for that win to the DNC and its state-by-state investments, which are part of an effort to direct Democratic donations and energy from third-party election groups to full-time organizing.
“It took a little while to pick ourselves up from the mat following the election,” said New York State Sen. James Skoufis, who briefly ran as a reform candidate for DNC chair before endorsing Martin. “We’ve moved on from despondency to the ‘give them hell’ stage of recovery.”
But over the course of three busy days, the party did not settle its arguments left over from 2024.
An effort to pass a unifying resolution about Israel’s war in Gaza ended with Martin withdrawing the one he’d passed, then agreeing to set up a task force with “stakeholders” who would figure it out. Martin brushed off concerns about the GOP’s fundraising advantage, telling the party’s executive committee that “Donald Trump has sold the government to the billionaires.”
Democrats in Minneapolis wanted to share his optimism. At several sessions, a leader of the donation portal ActBlue shared a “fight song” that the party could adopt, putting its lyrics on screens so that the crowds could sing along.
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The closest that Democrats came in Minneapolis to charting a course correction from their 2024 loss came when they took up arguments that have bedeviled them for years.
They debated how to better explain to working-class voters that they’d created jobs, including green energy jobs that the Trump administration had done away with. A presentation from Vera Action, a criminal justice reform group, urged Democrats to talk about how their cities had improved public safety, instead of cowering in the face of Republicans’ “tough on crime” messaging.
“Safety and justice must go hand in hand,” Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee told DNC members on Monday. “Let’s fight together, unapologetically and boldly.”
When party members broke for caucus meetings, Martin went from room to room, making clear that any Democrat who wanted the party to downplay or shift some of its positions in response to Republican attacks would have to go through him.
He repeated a mantra from the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone: “When we do better, we all do better.”
“I will reject anyone who stood up after this election loss and tried to scapegoat any community,” Martin said at a Monday meeting of the LGBTQ Equality caucus. “We have to stand up for every LGBTQ kid and their family who want to play sports like any other kid.”
That reassured party members like Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke, a trans woman and the sponsor of the state’s “trans refuge” law. After Martin left the room, Finke thanked him for his solidarity.
Leigh Finke speaks at the DNC meeting. David Weigel/Semafor
She then predicted more reversals on trans-inclusive policy before the midterms, and a wave of critical ads on the issue, because Republicans believed that their “gender-critical” messaging last year had been effective.
“I don’t think we do ourselves any favors as Democrats,” Finke said, by pretending “that what happened didn’t happen.”
Some of Martin’s work was left over from prior campaigns — reminders of how long infighting can drag on inside the DNC. On Tuesday morning, the party’s resolutions committee committed to find “real, enforceable steps the DNC can take to eliminate unlimited corporate and dark money in its 2028 presidential primary process.”
That was a demand Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters made during the 2016 primary. Convincing progressives that Democrats would not lean on corporate donors to hurt the left is clearly an ongoing struggle.
“Ten years in the making!” said Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb, a 2016 Sanders supporter, after the resolution passed unanimously.
Not long after that, California DNC member Joe Salas spoke in favor of a resolution condemning Islamophobia that ended up passing unanimously. But first he warned the party that New York Democrats’ refusal to endorse Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. He also objected to the local Democratic Farmer-Labor Party pulling its endorsement of Omar Fateh, a Somalian American state senator now running for Minneapolis mayor, who conservative media outlets are attacking for his left-wing politics.
“People are paying attention,” said Salas, wearing a Fateh campaign button on his lapel “Perception is reality.”
Room for Disagreement
Some Democrats attending the meeting aired open frustration about the media’s focus on their enduring areas of division.
After Martin withdrew his Gaza resolution — which was competing with a failed proposal from progressives that criticized Israel more directly — his compromise “task force” drew reporters’ attention.
As reporters re-entered the meeting room, where a resolution condemning Trump’s ICE raids was about to pass, Idaho DNC member Terri Pickens condemned their priorities.
“I wish that the press was more concerned about the unanimous consensus among the Democratic Party that we do not agree with disappearing anybody,” Pickens said.
David’s view
Debate and occasional messiness is part of normal partisan politics. One of the Democrats’ current disadvantages, which became clearer in Minneapolis, is that they are still trying to work out their usual differences while Republicans have completely unified behind their president.
The Republican National Committee has removed any drama from its in-person meetings. At its summer gathering last week, reporters were allowed only to attend a closing session where Joe Gruters replaced Michael Whatley as chairman, and where five resolutions — all commemorating Republican activists who had died — passed without objection.
Democrats moved through 36 resolutions in Minneapolis.
Does the appearance of “disarray” hurt a party? Not fatally, in many cases. Some candidates will always want some separation from the national party brand. (I don’t expect Maine Sen. Susan Collins will ever wear a “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING” hat, for example.)
But I was struck by how often Democrats carped at the media for covering their infighting when it could be covering the Trump administration … only to then allow reporters to be present to cover the infighting. I appreciate that choice.
Notable
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In Axios, Alex Thompson reports that Martin and other Democrats are considering a “midterm convention,” a brief party tradition abandoned in the 1980s.
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In the New York Times, Shane Goldmacher goes into more depth about the Gaza resolution two-step. “Jews need a safe space in this party,” said one Democrat who flew to the city just to support Martin’s nixed resolution.
