The chair of the Democratic National Committee quoted Beyblade to his party's leaders on Friday to kick off a weekend of official strategizing and informal commiserating over internal divisions.
Harrison told the 100 Democrats from 53 states and territories that the Democrats were not in disarray. We get in formation like Bey.
Harrison, who some DNC members have worried hasn't been getting the independence he needs from the White House to be successful in his role, received a standing ovation.
Democrats did not seem to take his words seriously. Democrats tried to assure the public that they would not see a big election upset in the next year's elections at the Charleston Marriott this weekend. The Democratic loss in Virginia's gubernatorial race hung over the proceedings.
Ken Martin, the association's president and chair of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, told fellow Democrats that the time for hand-wringing was over.
The Democratic hand-wringing continued outside of the rah-rah events on the official agenda. Democrats were talking about their prospects. The White House Press Secretary said he intended to do so, so they had their hands full. They had to change the order of their presidential nominating rules. There was talk of using "Democratic truth squad" around the country to correct the record about Republicans taking credit for their legislative accomplishments.
The Democrats had a lot of questions about how to get their message out. "We're exploring what it might look like to start a TikTok account," Cole told the executive committee on Saturday.
The dour atmospherics that Democrats find themselves in reflected the event itself. An official told the room at the beginning of Friday's programming that two vendors had tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The Democrats are stuck in a situation where they can't act on important parts of the president's agenda because of economic forces and political crosscurrents caused by a divided Senate. A generic Republican enjoys a 10-point advantage over a generic Democrat according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The economy makes for a challenging '22.
Interviews with nearly a dozen state party chairs and strategists painted a bleak picture for the party's chances to defend the House and Senate in the future.
A Democratic strategist told Insider that it would be silly of him to look at how we are politically with COVID, with the economy, with all these various things that we talked about to say, "Oh this is going to be an easy challenge."
The party could still be competitive if Congress passes the president's social spending package and voting rights legislation in the coming weeks, according to others. Michael Ceraso, executive director of Winning Margins, said that they would have plenty of time if Biden's social spending program got passed.
Ceraso's comment came a day before Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia effectively killed the possibility of the program becoming law. In an interview with 'Fox News Sunday', the Democratic senator said that he couldn't get there.
The chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party told Insider that the talk of a Democratic ballot box gutting was overblown. Robertson said that the Washington elite have a "Defeatist attitude" because they don't live in or visit the Middle America or the South. "That's something we talked about, and that's something that we're challenging ourselves to do going forward."
When the Democrats return to DC for their March meeting, they will likely decide whether to keep the Iowa-New Hampshire-Nevada-South Carolina lineup.
The Democratic official said that the conversations had started in earnest.
Some have suggested moving to a regional rotating primary system instead of giving less-diverse states an outsized role early in the process.
Raymond Buckley, chairman of the group, said, "There's been talk about that for 50 years, but nothing makes sense at all, because only the mega-wealthy, mega-star candidates have the ability to seek the nomination."
The deliberations show how quickly talk would turn to 2024 and whether President Joe Biden would run again.
One state party chair told Insider that Biden has made it clear that he is running again, but nobody really knows that. The person said that the DNC is going to prepare for all scenarios.
