Congressman Keith Ellison Considering Running For DNC Chair

Well, the post-election intrigue has started in the Democratic Party after a devastating election day in which Republicans took the presidency and held on to both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. After the horrible handling of the debates and the email leaks under Debbie Wasserman Shultz and the sad revelations about Donna Brazile leaking debate questions to Hillary Clinton, several Democrats are discussing vying to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee. One of those people is Minnesota Congressman and hardcore progressive Keith Ellison.

Rep. Keith Ellison, a leading progressive voice in Congress and one of only two Muslim Americans in the House of Representatives, has his eyes on becoming the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.

The Minnesota Democrat has been planning a run for weeks, and has begun informally talking to other party lawmakers and insiders about his prospects for the post, several sources have told The Huffington Post.

His name was floated as a possible DNC chair by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday morning, giving him the type of institutional progressive support that would make his candidacy formidable. MoveOn.org, a major progressive network, also said in a statement that Ellison would be “an excellent DNC chair.”

Ellison’s identity as a black man and the first Muslim member of Congress would serve as a symbolic rebuke to President-elect Donald Trump. And his ties to Sanders would give him credibility in the progressive community that feels the party has catered too much to elite interests. He is also regarded as a savvy television presence ― which seems likely to be a major requirement for the job in the age when Democrats are out of power in every branch of government.

Read more: Congressman Keith Ellison Wants To Run The DNC

Congresswoman Marcia Fudge named DNC Convention Chair

Related story: Donna Brazile named interim DNC chair

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not speak at or preside over the party's convention this week, a decision reached by party officials Saturday after emails surfaced that raised questions about the committee's impartiality during the Democratic primary.

The DNC Rules Committee on Saturday rescinded Wasserman Schultz's position as convention chairwoman, instead naming Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, as permanent chair of the convention, according to a DNC source. She will gavel each session to order and will gavel each session closed, a role that had been expected to be held by Wasserman Schultz.

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Why is Debbie Wasserman Schultz getting a pass on democratic thrashing in 2014 mid-terms

By now we all know that the democrats took a major ass kicking in the 2014 mid-terms. Many have blamed President Obama for this and maybe rightfully so. Many talking heads have said that this election was a referendum on President Obama's policies. As the President of the US, he is the head of the party so some blame goes to him the same way he would have gotten credit if the democrats had held onto the US Senate.

Many democratic candidates have been blamed for running bad campaigns or single issue campaigns. Some kept rambling about women's reproductive rights, another about income inequality, and another about Obamacare. But they didn't seem to focus on the many ongoing issues affecting voters in their states. Now even though all politics is local on a national level the democrats running for Senate, and the House of Representatives seemed to have no one coherent message. The republicans had one, and it was simple, Obama is bad. Yeah, they ran against something instead of for something but it was a simple message that was uniform across the states and worked.

The infuriating part is that the democrats had great things to talk about. Unemployment continues to drop, gas prices continue to drop, and the stock market is booming and the democrats mentioned none of that in a nationwide narrative. There was no one message that resonated across the country as the republicans had.

Democratic candidates in some states ran away from the president's policies, even attacked him on some issues and asked him not to come to their states. This resulted in losses for everyone that tried that strategy of distancing themselves from the president. No one seemed to get the idea that he could ENERGIZE and MOBILIZE the democratic base.

I'm wondering when DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz will get the blame for this? As the chair it was her job to get the message and a strategy out there like her counterpart at the RNC, Reince Priebus did. It was her job to get candidates to but into a comprehensive strategy. In my opinion, she did not, and that led to a huge failure on election night. She deserves a large part of the blame, and I'm wondering why she hasn't stepped down as chair or why President Obama hasn't asked her to step down?

Quite simply she did not get the job done and does not deserve another bite at the apple. I hope we as democrats don't intend to let her led the charge again in 2016 because, in 2014, she led us to republican control of both the House and Senate.

I'm just saying.

George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com