As his time as president of the National Democratic Committee comes to an end after a difficult electoral cycle, Jaime Harrison expects people in their party to come to “understand that you should be more elastic than rigid.”
Harrison, who He was elected by then President Joe Biden to take care of the role In 2021, he said: “Sometimes we have people who are very rigid. If you don’t have the right job, if you don’t come from the right community, if you don’t say the right word and then, therefore, you are X-Ed or You are punished. ”
“We need to stop on that. Let’s be a great tent, and be an open tent and hug more diversity, in terms of thought,” Harrison said.
Harrison’s comments occur when party leaders prepare to choose their successor on Saturday during a meeting in Maryland.
In a conversation before the elections to replace it, Harrison strongly defended Biden and was stopped by the ray process that saw the then vice president Kamala Harris Receive support from DNC delegates and becoming the new party candidate after Biden finished his re -election offer last summer.
Aware that some at the party could consider an instantaneous white house offer, Harrison said he had registered with some of the “people who had expressed some interest in the future to run,” including the governors.
“Each of them said: ‘I’m not going to run. I am supporting Kamala Harris.’ , said.
In addition, Harrison believes that the rules of the party made any discussion about a brief primary in the period prior to the Chicago Convention impossible.
“Then you are saying … after the primaries were made, so we should restart another main process,” said Harrison. “How do you do that? Who is going to pay for those primaries? Is the DNC supposed to pay for those primaries? Because, do you know, the primaries cost money, right?”
When asked about Harris, the 2024 candidate of the party, Harrison said that the former vice president should run again for the White House if desired.
“If I didn’t believe Kamala Harris could win, I wouldn’t have worked as hard as I did to help her win this last time,” he said. “When you look at politics, Donald Trump and Barack Obama are only enigmas in politics. I think they do something different from the electorate every time they run that you cannot counteract, but when they are not on the electoral ballot, it is almost as if you returned, Political gravity pushes people again. [2022] Intermediate matches “.
The party struggles in 2024, when enough voters put on the side of President Donald Trump and his very different vision for the country than adopted by the Democrats, has created important questions about the way to follow for the party.
“I know that in a 176 -year -old story, people have written the epitaph of the Democratic Party many times, and people are trying to write it again. But do not sleep in this Democratic Party. What we have to do is build on the infrastructure We have built, “said Harrison.
And while the search for the soul of the Democrats continues, the Republicans in Washington have been turning the victory in the first days of the return to Trump’s power.
“We have seen the greatest political return in American history that develops before our eyes. We need to win four of the seven swing states. President Trump won the seven,” said the president of the Republican National Committee, Michael Whatley, at the beginning of This month at a match event. “We needed to maintain the popular vote near. President Trump won it by millions of votes. We needed Surveys “.
Harrison directed the DNC through a turbulent time in American politics. The party that has the White House generally fights in intermediate exams, but the movement of the conservative majority in the Supreme Court of the United States to cancel Roe v. Wade and put an end to federal law to an abortion became a catalyzed problem for Democrats in 2022. That year. , The Democrats were able to add to their narrow majority in the Senate as they lost the camera little, despite the hopes of the Republican Party of an important “red wave.”
The 2024 electoral cycle was full of much more marked challenges for the Democrats. The party defended the seats of the Senate in the states dominated by the Republicans of Montana and Ohio, while the headlines in battlefield states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada were also on the electoral ballot. The concerns about the age of Biden had been built, although the revised list of the first primary states introduced Harrison and Biden, starting with the native state of Harrison of South Carolina with the first primary democrats sanctioned by the National Party, helped isolate the holder of an important challenge.
However, the concerns broke in an important way after the disastrous performance of Biden in June against Trump, which led to public calls within the party of the elected leaders for Biden to end their re -election offer. After building pressure, Biden retired from the race and quickly supported Harris. The Democrats gathered around Harris, who only had about 107 days between his entrance to the race and the elections.
The verdict of the voters in November 2024 was a sharp setback for the Democrats, who not only lost the White House to Trump once again and the control of the Senate, but also did not manage to recover control of the camera. That result left some Democrats from Congress saying after the elections they should have asked Biden to leave the race before.
“President Biden, in terms of Legacy, has many successes to point out,” said Texas Lloyd Doggett representative CBS News In November 2024 After the choice. “But the most important success would have been if it had taken aside a year ago and has given us a better opportunity to prevent Trump from returning.”
It is coming about the contest to replace Harrison as leader of the DNC is the sting of the losses of 2024 and a mark of the Democratic Party that has eroded with key segments of the voters. The main contestants to replace Harrison include the former governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley, the president of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Ben Wikler and Ken Martin, the leader of the arm of the Minnesota Democratic Party.
“The majority of Americans now believe that the Republican party better represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the rich and elites,” Martin wrote in his framework for President. “It is a condemnatory accusation in the mark of our party. We must be willing to deepen and recent the democratic agenda to unite families through race, age, background and class.”
Harrison has decided not to support the race to replace it. But he said that Martin, the Minnesota Democrat, “would be an infernal chair,” before adding that “there are many good candidates that I think would also do a good job as president.”
Harrison met at the national level in 2020 for his attempt to expel republican senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina Senate race. Despite losing, Harrison’s career showed progress for the Democrats. While Graham had gone to re -election around 17 points in 2014He defeated Harrison for a little more than 10 points in the red state.
But Harrison indicated earlier this week that he would not compete for a public office in the short term. He is anxious to spend time with his family and also hopes to rebuild the South for the Democratic Party.
But those are not the only reasons.
Harrison said that over the years he had wanted to be the apparent heir to the American representative of South Carolina, James Clyburn, and the seat that the influential leader has had for decades, the attack of January 6, 2021 against the Capitol of the United States by a multitude of Trump’s the supporters and their consequences have damping those ambitions.
“I still put goosebumps when I see that dome lights there,” said Harrison, sitting in the DNC building near the United States Capitol. “But seeing what happened on January 6, and seeing how people have engaged that, particularly on the Republican side, to see vitriol and hate in the political body at this time, it is not something that I want to be part of ”
Alexandria Johnson and Anne Bryson contributed to this report.
Ed O’Keefe
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