The national (un)Democratic Party is making it clear that they have not learned form the disaster of Nov 8.  This excerpt from a recent Observer article:  “In a recent interview, House Minority Leader Pelosi confirmed that the Democratic Party doesn’t plan on enacting any reforms or making any changes beyond different marketing strategies. “I don’t think people want a new direction,” she said in a December 4 interview with CBS’ Face the Nation. “Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families.”  What values: prioritizing corporate profits over meeting the needs of the people and our planet? Are you kidding me?

To be clear, the Democratic Party just lost a national election to–without a doubt –the least qualified, most unpopular candidate in history. OK, you won the popular vote, but it was a huge failure to not have won this election in a landslide. Significant change is needed.  And it is needed now both nationally and locally.  Click here for a link on how to support Keith Ellison for the new DNC chair.  He is endorsed by Bernie Sanders and our own Martin Heinrich. This is one way to start the reform from the top down.

Pelosi’s strategy as a leader is simply to expect Americans to begin voting for Democrats because they are appalled by Trump. “Better than the worst possible candidate” is not a rallying cry. And the Party’s hubris is what brought the Democratic Party to this point. To read the entire article, click here.

In New Mexico the race for State Democratic Chair has two candidates to date: Richard Ellenberg, from Santa Fe, and Juan Sanchez, the current Party Co-Chair. The election is not until March, but it is incumbent upon us to question both candidates thoroughly about their views on opening the party and welcoming new progressive blood in leadership roles.  And recent rules changes made by the DPNM Rules Committee are not exactly opening up the party to new blood.  The Rules Committee at the last State Central Committee meeting passed a new rule stating that 4 of the 11 members of the Rules Committee have to be previous members, including the new chair of the committee. This is clearly an effort to ensure that the old guard remain in control.  Why not stipulate that there would be two co-chairs and one must be a new member?  Why must 4 previous members remain?

Another thing we need to change is the composition of our DNC representation. Currently our New Mexico DNC representatives include Raymond Sanchez and Fred Harris, the embodiment of the status quo Democratic machine, with Sanchez a lobbyist for the payday lending industry. It doesn’t get much more undemocratic than that. So we need to vet candidates for Party Chair very carefully, ask about their strategies to open up the party, and change our representation to the DNC.  We will be reporting on the DPNM Chair race over the next weeks and months.