Congratulations to Ken Martin, The New Chair of the Democratic Party!
Let's help Ken get off to a strong start!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Friends, we have a new Chair of the Democratic Party, Ken Martin, the Chairman of the Democratic Party of Minnesota, and President of the Association of the Democratic Party State Committees (ASDC). Ken has been a very successful Chair in Minnesota and has fought tirelessly to build a national party that is more than just the seven battlegrounds states. He won a decisive victory on the first ballot earlier today, and will be taking the helm in the coming days.
Expect more from me about Ken and the future of the DNC this weekend. In the meantime watch the interview I did with him a few weeks ago to get a better sense of him and where he wants to take us. Ken is a good friend and I am confident he will be a strong and effective Chair for us in this time of extraordinary challenge.
To help Ken get off to a strong start I am asking members of the Hopium community to consider making a donation of any amount to the DNC today. It’s my hope that together we can raise $50,000 for Ken and the new DNC by the end of March, and as much as we can this weekend. You can donate today through this dedicated Hopium ActBlue page or however you choose to give.
I want to thank Martin O’Malley, Ben Wikler and the other candidates for Chair for running such a spirited race. I know many in this community were supporting Ben Wikler. Ben, as everyone knows here, is a good friend of the Hopium community and I look forward to continuing to work closely with him, particularly on the critical Supreme Court race in Wisconsin this spring.
As we’ve discussed here one of Ken’s big early jobs will be to help Leaders Schumer and Jeffries, and the other Democratic Party Committees, to find a way of harnessing the energy that is out there right now, and turning all of us - the millions of donors and volunteers, traditional Dem Party allies, the new pro-democracy media ecosystem, our many grassroots orgs and tens of thousands of elected officials - into an effective and ferocious opposition. It is going to take a re-think and re-imagination of our we do our work together, and I look forward to doing everything possible to help Ken get this done so we can fight Trump far more effectively than we are today.
The need to build this effective and ferocious opposition is ever more urgent given the news late yesterday about Trump/Musk’s escalating assault on our government (this too) and the purge of the FBI, and the breaking news about the dangerous tariffs our Mad Orange King has levied on goods coming into the US from our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and China. I encourage everyone to review yesterday’s post on the need for all of us to bear witness, get loud and together fight Trump’s extraordinary, ongoing betrayal of the country.
After a spirited race, we have a new Chairman of the Democratic Party. I hope you will join me in supporting Ken in these critical early days, and committing to doing everything you can to help make him - and our Party - successful in the many critical battles ahead - Simon
Already got a text asking for $100 from Martin. In the meantime Elon musk and his allies just got COMPLETE CONTROL over the federal government’s payment system (6 trillion) and all associated data, including all of our social security numbers, from the secretary of the treasury Scott Bessent. I don’t think it is hyperbolic to say we are watching a coup unfold in front of our eyes. Could we stop acting as if everything is normal and we can just proceed with business as usual? Our leaders need to lead and message in this moment - and if they won’t, then perhaps it is time for us to engage in mass civil disobedience. What am
I missing here?
Simon, I congratulate Ken and hope he does well. But, his first job should not be "to help Schumer and Jefferies to find a way of harnessing the energy that is out there right now....". That energy is the grassroots activists who haven't stopped doing the leg work, the social media outreach, the door-to-door canvassing, writing hundreds of thousands of postcards, etc. for Dem candidates. We are the resistance the Dem party needs to survive. We get it! Schumer does not.
His first and most important job, in my opinion, is to respectfully and quickly transition Schumer out of the Senate Dems leadership position and replace him with a younger, more "with it" Senator; one who understands the present day dynamic and who is not working from an outdated, dysfunctional playbook. Bipartisanship is not working. The Senate minority leader needs to take off the gloves and pick up the gauntlet. The Dem Party is on life-support right now and the last thing it needs is a DNC Director who plays nice. End of my rant.