Former South Carolina Senate candidate Jaime Harrison said on Tuesday that he would be “all in” if asked to lead the Democratic National Committee, in an effort to reshape a party that failed to make key gains in races earlier this month.
I can neither confirm nor deny that I have been tapped to lead the DNC via my virtual platform at TPM. It would be unfair to the other candidates to comment prior to an announcement. But let’s just say that I’m not not denying that an offer has or has not been made.
I have nothing against Jaime Harrison at all but it might be better to ‘pick’ one of the ladies from Georgia who worked tirelessly to bring the vote.
I thought Jamie Harrison came across really well in whatever platform I saw him, but his race was hardly an exemplar of a successful Democratic race.
If anything, he way underperformed in the elections, while way overperforming in donations. Which is literally THE problem the Democrats need to solve. Focusing less on raising funds and more on using those funds effectively.
This is a most excellent idea. Jaime would put a lot of excitement and fire into the grassroots effort for the DNC. Stacey Abrams would also be super! However, I always felt she would be an excellent governor. I would just love it if she ran again for Georgia and won. These two fine individuals are definite rising stars. Long past being recognized as such.
The times they are a changing. We need young passionate leaders that really represent our party and America as it is now not what it was in 1960. Although, I must admit that Merrick Garland as AG has a delicious ring to it.
Well he can’t do worse than Tom Perez, that is for sure.
I would love to see Abrams, but she will not take the job, she wants to run for Governor of GA again. Too bad she did not run for senate. No way she wants a part building job, although she would be great at it.
Harrison would actually be a good fit. He is a moderate (not liberal) pro-business African-american who has a great story to tell. Sort of straddles the two wings of the party.
I like him a lot, and the reasons he didn’t win SC are the same reasons no GOP candidate is going to win a statewide election in CA. That said, this should be Stacy Abrams’ job hands down. Only if she doesn’t want it should we even consider anyone else. If she refuses then he would be my next choice.
This is really well-thought out. It is striking to me to see that we have such a wealth of great candidates for all of the jobs to fill. At Federal and State levels. We are lucky to have such talent. (Unlike the other party/parties.) It will be very nice for a change. We just have to actually get there. We are impatient for very good reasons. Our lives are at stake. The loser, having lost, needs to get the hell outta Dodge…
He underperformed the polling by about the same margin that just about everyone across the country did, but mostly SC is a ruby red state and it isn’t going to flip overnight. It will take multiple attempts before it finally flips just as it did with GA and VA and AZ and CO.
And right on schedule, the inevitable “Dems in Disarray” opinion…
He will probably exceed Perez by simply saying Hi.
Never warmed to Perez from the moment I listened to him speak the first time. I really never got a sense of any real fire in the guy, too dry.
Fuck Tiger Beat.
And his people management skills were non-existent. Never understood why we couldn’t find a better DNC Chair than Perez.
I’d prefer Stacey Abrams.
I was going to chime in that a failed Senate candidate seems like a not great choice to lead a national party that needs to seriously focus on building from the bottom up. But I wanted to see if there was any empirical evidence that Harrison was some kind of kick-ass party organizer. So I looked at Harrison’s actual election results and compared them to the 2016 presidential and Senate results in South Carolina.
Trump improved his 2016 vote total by about 230,000 votes. At the same time, Biden improved over Hillary by about 236,000 votes, so that’s basically a wash. Graham improved over Tim Scott’s 2016 total by about 127,000 votes. Harrison improved over the never-heard-of-him-before 2016 Dem candidate by about 354,000 votes. But he still only got 20,000 more votes than Joe Biden.
South Carolina 2020 looks to me pretty much like the rest of the nation, with markedly higher turnout for both sides and a national swing of about 3% in total margin. I don’t think we can attribute that swing to anything that Jamie Harrison uniquely did in South Carolina. And the much shittier results in 2016 came when he was state party chair. So all things considered, I think I will take a pass unless someone has solid evidence that he’s a super-talented organizer.
Stacy Abrams would be the best choice, hands down. But let’s add some other regions and groups to the mix – Beto O’Rourke, Elissa Slotkin and Jamie Harrision would make a supporting cast.
Harrison announced that he would be launching a political action committee called “Dirt Road PAC”.
He said the ‘dirt road’ symbolized broken promises from both Democrats and Republicans…
I, too, have nothing against Harrison, but how about Stacy Abrams? One thing I definitely DO want to see is someone who is more progressive than we have gotten in recent years. If we go back to the same old Democratic institutionalists, which seems to be Biden’s preference, we’re going to lose again. Progressives have won in the midterm and this election.
Broken record, progress is rarely fast.
If you’re referring to Stacey, I’m pretty sure she still has her hat tilted towards being Governor of Georgia.
She has enough new Democratic voters registered and they have a paper trail on their new Dominion voting machines. I believe she can now take Kemp’s job if she wants to. I’m all for letting her decide what she wants to do instead of trying to pick positions/jobs we think she should have. That girl don’t need our help or advice. She’ll do just fine on her own choosing the job she wants.