Beginning what looks like a full-scale party offensive, Senate Democrats released a series of legislative proposals this week, which, they say, will serve as their Top 10 agenda items for the current session of Congress. There was a coherence to the enterprise that betrayed some of the policy strategizing and message-messaging that party leaders have been promising for some time. There was even a tag line with reasonable battle-cry potential: “Security, Opportunity, and Responsibility.”

For a few weeks before the holidays, there was a school of thought that embraced and promulgated the idea that, at this particular moment, the choice of a new chair of the Democratic National Committee was an inconsequential event. The argument was that the party was so confused at this juncture, embroiled in so many contentious debates, that whomever got the job now would likely no longer have the job two years from now, in the run-up to the next presidential cycle. Therefore, the new chair would have little influence on the most important thing the party can do: to win presidential elections. This, in other words, was to be a caretaker chairmanship until a heavy-hitter is revealed.