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Faiz Shakir has a different vision for how to organize from the DNC.
So far this year, Democrats are running an experiment in how America operates politically without an opposition party. We already knew that Donald Trump, who becomes the 47th president today, would push the envelope of unilateral action. But Democrats appear bound and determined to surrender to his every impulse.
The first bill Trump will sign into law in his second term is the Laken Riley Act, which would mandate the detention of any undocumented immigrant who has ever been accused, not convicted, of a crime. Senate Democrats first said they would merely open debate and seek amendments; but when no meaningful amendments passed, enough Dems voted for it anyway to end debate.
The sorry display exemplifies confusion over how to navigate this political era. They have rejected resistance in favor of a cold porridge of collaboration, while throwing over the vulnerable people on the other end of that strategy. Too many Democrats appear satisfied merely with having the keys to the congressional gym. At the leadership level, they are trying to perfectly calibrate how to agree with Trump just enough to make voters like them, instead of articulating principles, picking fights, and laying out a clear alternative. The results have ranged from too cute by half to genuine disaster.
Into this leadership vacuum walks Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’s former campaign manager and a longtime presence on the progressive left. He made a snap decision last week to try to infuse Democrats with a clear vision from the unlikely perch of the Democratic National Committee chairmanship.
Until this point, the DNC race has been rather sleepy. The voting members seem relatively pleased with their leading options, Minnesota state party chair Ken Martin and Wisconsin party chair Ben Wikler. To the extent there’s been a theme in the race, it’s about internal reform of an organization that is thoroughly undemocratic and opaque. Though Shakir has strongly associated himself with unions, the big four public employee unions that really dominate the labor movement have endorsed Wikler. Shakir jumping in late may deprive Wikler of votes and keep the front-runner, Martin, on a path to victory.
But the DNC (or the RNC, for that matter) has never been where ideology originates, nor has it had the power to corral disparate Democratic electeds into a common purpose. In many ways, that’s why Shakir entered the race, he told me in an interview last week.
Virtually every Democrat, from AOC and Bernie Sanders to James Carville and Rahm Emanuel, agree with repositioning the Democrats as more economically populist. At least some parts of Joe Biden’s administration actually governed in that direction, to counteract corporate power. But Shakir’s complaint is that the party apparatuses haven’t risen to this challenge; there’s too much focus instead on internal procedures, more money for state parties, and smarter fundraising (only taking money from “good billionaires” and not “bad billionaires,” as Martin put it in a recent forum).
“We are moving around deck chairs on something that is sinking,” he said. “In a different time and era, Martin and Wikler can manage the bureaucracy and do the assignment. But you’re missing the boat if you’re not thinking about who is the spokesperson of the brand and what the party stands for.”
The problem, Shakir quickly found out, is that DNC members are pretty much given nothing to do.
Shakir has some interesting ideas for how to achieve this: making the DNC a media outlet in the mold of the one he runs (More Perfect Union), actively walking picket lines and taking on union fights, building civic bonds through Super Bowl watch parties and other meetups. But maybe the best case for Shakir’s vision, ironically, is that his ideas could have been tapped at any point over the past four years. Because Faiz Shakir was a DNC member that entire time.
When Bernie Sanders’s campaign dropped out in 2020, Shakir was asked by the Biden team to join the party as an at-large delegate. He had never been involved with the DNC before; such a role was essentially the kind of superdelegate that Sanders ran against in both of his presidential races. But if Shakir and others were let into the party structure, they could in theory change it from within, bringing new life to an outlet that, though often overstated as the puppet masters of Democratic politics, still has a historical lineage and 57 affiliated local parties and $100 million or so to make a difference.
The problem, Shakir quickly found out, is that DNC members are pretty much given nothing to do.
“The way I was asked to participate, they said, ‘Pick two councils to be on,’” Shakir said. “I think I checked rural and labor. You get added to this roster, you go the DNC meeting. I said, ‘Where’s the discourse about the strategy to win? Are there polling presentations? Do we discuss in group settings?’” But as Shakir described it, the councils were mainly social gatherings, a place to hear speeches and rally and chat.
I had a distinct recollection of the one time I got involved as a delegate to the California Democratic Party many years ago. I rapidly learned that the state conventions, the only formal role for delegates, were just sandboxes for relatively meaningless resolutions and late-night parties. It was not just that outside consultants made all the important decisions, though they did. It was that they didn’t think there were really any decisions to make. Taking positions on policy was rare, but more than that, there was no strategic insight into how the party should introduce itself to voters, how it should organize, how it should make use of its resources.
Shakir contrasted this to when he briefly ran the American Civil Liberties Union as its policy director. He would orient state affiliates around particular missions. “I would say, ‘We have to expand voting rights. What is going on in your state where we can do that? Pitch us, and ask for program money to help you accomplish this goal,’” he said.
The DNC has this image as the keepers of the all-powerful establishment flame, rigging primaries and silencing dissent. In reality, the organization is really a cardboard backdrop. It spends a lot of money to raise a lot of money so it can spend a lot of money on banal advertising that makes consultants rich every couple of years. It wastes the talent and energy of people who want to be put to work, Shakir told me. “I fear that we’re not going to do anything differently because no one has any ideas. We gather in different settings but we have no purpose.”
That purpose could come out of the capture of Trump’s government by unelected billionaires, what Shakir called “the largest merger and acquisition in American history.” It could come out of contrasting that with the real work policymakers like Lina Khan did to look out for the public. It could come out of the defining legislative initiative of the next year: Republicans paying for tax cuts for elites with spending cuts for the needy.
Polling suggests this posture is exactly what Democrats want. But there is little history of getting this from the party organization rather than from its leading figures. Changing this would require the DNC to have an actual mission, rather than a bank account.
The national parties always fold into White House messaging when their party holds the presidency. And voices like Donald Trump on the outside eliminate the need for a strong party. But as Shakir pointed out, there is no recognized person speaking for Democrats right now. In fact, the leading voices don’t agree on the party’s direction, and with the absence of a defined direction, they look out for themselves and sink into compliance. Into that drift, the DNC could really help set the direction. But only if they want to.
“Our job is to figure out what bonds us and fire us up,” Shakir said. “I’m operating on the assumption that people have checked out of the Democratic Party. There’s a little bit of hopelessness. At that moment, you have to turn their heads.”
