DNC Chair Tom Perez schooled the media and the rest of the country on why they are already winning elections before the midterm has arrived.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the argument, though, that you’re misdirected here. That, you know, you’ve got big mid-terms coming up. Democrats have to be putting out a positive agenda. By following the shiny object of investigating Trump, suing Trump, looking back at the campaign you’re missing the boat, it’s going to backfire.
PEREZ: George, we can walk and chew gum. We’re fighting for good jobs. We’re fighting for health care for all. We’re fighting for good teacher pay and good education. And we’re fighting to preserve our democracy. You can’t win elections — it’s a lot harder to win elections if you have interference in elections.
And what we’re building at the DNC is a strong voter protection infrastructure. And one way to make sure we protect voters this November is to make sure we are doing our level best to ensure that interference never occurs again.
We’ve been winning elections because we’ve been talking about the issues. We continue to talk about the issues. We have organizers on the ground in Arizona for Tuesday’s election. We had organizers on the ground in the election in Wisconsin that occurred a couple of weeks ago. We’re organizing everywhere. We’re winning everywhere. And one of the reasons we’re winning is because people believe that we should stand up for our Democracy. That’s what we’re doing in this lawsuit, George. We can walk and chew gum.
Democrats are building the party from the grassroots up
Much has changed since Tom Perez and Keith Ellison took over the DNC. Democrats are organizing in red districts and competing in special elections. The DNC is rebuilding state parties, and most importantly, they’ve adopted a national strategy where they compete everywhere.
There is this myth leftover from the 2016 election that Democrats aren’t winning, but Democrats have been setting records in special elections for turnout. Democrats won a Senate seat in Alabama, a House seat in Pennsylvania, and they could win another House seat in Arizona this week. Democrats have a plan. They are further along than they probably thought they would be at this point, but it is happening.
Democrats are building an effective organization, and if the media doesn’t believe in it yet, they will after the midterm in November.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
