AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK, get ready. There is another election coming up - that's right - for the chair of the Democratic National Committee. Now, while it may not seem consequential to some people, the winner will play a big role in helping to determine what the next presidential election looks and sounds like. NPR's senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson is here to explain. Hey, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, there.
CHANG: OK, so tell us why this election matters so much.
LIASSON: Well, it matters who the party chair is, of either party, when the party is out of power. It doesn't really matter who the party chair is when the party is in power because the president is the main spokesman for the party.
CHANG: Right.
LIASSON: You need a good technocrat - someone who can fundraise and organize. You don't have to hear from them very much. We didn't hear very much from Jaime Harrison, who's been the DNC chair up until now. But when the party is out of power, as Democrats are now, with control of zero branches of government, they want someone at the DNC more or less of the same stature as the congressional leaders - the minority leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, and, in the Senate, Chuck Schumer - because they're going to be the three most visible, high-profile Democrats.
CHANG: OK. And how does this election work, exactly?
LIASSON: It's supposed to be held in early 2025. There are only 447 voters - those are the members of the Democratic National Committee. It's held by secret ballot. It's kind of like a presidential election for senior class president, only with much, much higher stakes.
CHANG: (Laughter) Right. And what is in this job description?
LIASSON: Very basic - win elections again. Get the party organized to win the two off-year elections in November of 2025 - and those are the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey. But more broadly, this person has to help the party figure out what went wrong this year and how to adjust its approach and its message so it doesn't lose again. Now, in 2024, Democrats know that this was a very decisive, broad rejection. It was a sweep, not a wave. In other words, Trump pushed almost every county to the right, but he didn't have a lot of coattails. Democrats are not starting in the same position as they were, for instance, in the 1980s, when they were wiped out all over the place. But there does seem to be a consensus forming that the cultural left needs to be pushed to the side and an economic message aimed at the working class needs to be much more front and center.
You know, the Democrats have a big social class problem. People earning over $100,000 a year voted for Harris, but they're only 37% of the country. There's a big divide between college-educated and not college-educated, and Democrats are on the wrong side of that right now. And they look at states like Missouri - very red state that passed referendums for the minimum wage, paid leave and abortion rights. So Democratic policies are popular, but they have to figure out how to talk to working-class people, Black, brown and white, especially men, and they - that is going to be the main job of this new chair, whoever it ends up being.
CHANG: OK. Well, who is in the running to be the new chair?
LIASSON: Well, there are only two people who have said for sure they want to run. That's Martin O'Malley, the former Democratic governor of Maryland and the former Social Security commissioner. Ken Martin is the chair of what is Minnesota's state Democratic Party, and he's also the chairman of the National Association of State Democratic Committees - it's kind of the trade association of state chairs. So he has a constituency among the 447 members of the DNC, even if he doesn't have a national profile.
Then there's a bunch of people who are considering it. Ben Wikler, the state party chair in Wisconsin, will make a decision in the next couple of weeks. There's talk about Mallory McMorrow, a state senator in Michigan, Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago. Democrats are expecting, by the time we get to January, there will be many more candidates. And if you put a help-wanted sign outside of the Democratic Party headquarters on Capitol Hill, it would say, help wanted - good communicator, especially for working-class men of all races.
CHANG: (Laughter).
LIASSON: Must be able to raise money, organize and communicate on television, podcasts and social media.
CHANG: Got that?
LIASSON: (Laughter).
CHANG: That is NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you so much, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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