First the item, here:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, an ally of Biden and Harris, said in a statement that Democrats lost the thread on working class Americans’ concerns.
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” the Vermont independent said. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?”
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison took to social media Thursday to push back on Sanders’ critique, saying that Biden was “the most-pro worker President of my life time.”
Harrison is not that old - born February 5, 1976, per Wikipedia. He is saying that Biden is more pro-worker than Reagan and the Bushes, likely true, but than also more than Carter and Obama, and I remember Biden in the Senate being big for the credit card companies and their rates of interest.
Wikipedia on Harrison also reports:
Born and raised in South Carolina, Harrison graduated from Yale University and then headed a non-profit to assist students in achieving in education and career. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center. Harrison worked for South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn and became staff director for the House Democratic Caucus. He then worked as a lobbyist, before being selected to chair the South Carolina Democratic Party.
Clyburn's man heading the party, Clyburn's candidate put in in place of Biden when the "too old" stories were peaking, reporting yesterday was Harrison would not seek reelection to head the National Party. He and Clyburn and Harris got hammered, and he is falling on his sword. And - Bernie was correct. Blue collar workers elected Trump, and Harrison denies it on the way out the door.
Whether Bernie gets listened to this time is doubtful, given how the party treated him when it had been decided 2016 was "Hillary's turn." Listen to him 2028 and win, or in 2028 lose again with Hollywood folks saying the Party's fine. Wikipedia adds:
Harrison became involved in politics, working for Jim Clyburn as his director of floor operations while Clyburn was the Majority Whip of the United States House of Representatives.[10] Harrison went on to serve as executive director of the House Democratic Caucus and the vice chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.[9] He later served as a lobbyist for the Podesta Group.[4][11] His clients at the Podesta Group included banks, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, Berkshire Hathaway,[12] pharmaceutical companies,[13] casinos, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and Walmart,[14] among others.[15] In addition to lobbying work at Podesta Group, he has also lobbied on behalf of United Way Worldwide and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.[6]
Yes. Podesta Group! The Hillary losers fund him and does he represent anybody but Democrat big money shills - Big Pharma, clean coal and all that crap?
In May 2013, Harrison became the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party. He is the first African American to have served in this role.[4][16]
In 2018, Harrison published the book Climbing the Hill: How to Build a Career in Politics and Make a Difference (ISBN - 9780399581946), with journalist Amos Snead.[17]
Democratic National Committee
2017 candidacy for Chair
Harrison declared his candidacy for chairperson of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the February 2017 election.[18][19] He defended his eight-year record at the Podesta Group, saying, "It's how I pay back the $160,000 of student loan debt."[20] Harrison ended his bid for DNC chair on February 23, 2017, and endorsed Tom Perez.[21]
At least then he was held to task for Podesta Group affiliation. Continuing:
Harrison accepted a position as associate chairman and counselor of the DNC, where he implemented a program called "Every ZIP Code Counts." The program supplied each state party with $10,000 per month so long as the state party did an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses for its internal operations.[22]
2021 election as Chair
Following President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election, Harrison was nominated by Biden to be the chair of the DNC, succeeding Tom Perez.[23] DNC members elected him on January 21, 2021.[24]
Biden nominated Clyburn's man after Clyburn's endorsement elevated Biden's run for president from obscurity to front runner; after the big dropout; where Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, others put in to stymie Warren and Bernie all exited on cue, in harmony, as rigged.
Wikipedia next describes Harrison's unsuccessful Senate run against incumbent Linseed Graham:
Harrison filed paperwork on February 7, 2019, to challenge Senator Lindsey Graham by running for his seat in the U.S. Senate in the 2020 election. No Democrat has won a statewide election in South Carolina since 2006.[25] Harrison launched his campaign on May 29, 2019.[2] Economist and Democrat Gloria Bromell Tinubu announced her run for the seat in May 2019. In January 2020, Tinubu dropped out of the race, endorsing Harrison.[26] With Harrison unopposed, the Democratic primary for US Senate was cancelled, and he became the Democratic nominee on June 9, 2020.[27]
Candidate without facing a primary contest sounds somehow familiar:
[...] In the third quarter of 2020, Harrison raised $57 million, the largest quarterly total by a U.S. Senate candidate ever, breaking Beto O'Rourke's record in the 2018 Texas Senate election.[30] He also raised the most ever by a U.S. Senate candidate, beating another record set by O'Rourke.[31]
Harrison called for expansion of Medicaid[3] and expanded coronavirus relief.[3] During the 2020 Senate election, Harrison criticized Graham for attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.[32] Harrison also supports the legalization of cannabis.[33]
Harrison lost the election to Graham by over ten percentage points, [...]
Harrison broke U.S. Senate campaign fundraising records by raising $109 million.
So the money was there, Graham was a long term white Republican incumbent, and Harrison lost by a large measure. Whether South Carolina, statewide, was ready for a Black Democratic candidate against a long seated incumbent is likely as much a cause of defeat as any other.
Clyburn, in effect delivers the Democratic Party early, to a chosen middle of the road candidate, but winning the general election is not a part of the story.
This election, Clyburn and Harrison had their shot with Harris and lost big time to Trump, and the headline of the Crabgrass above-cited AP story was Biden was getting blamed by some for Clyburn, Harrison, Harris, and Hollywood losing.
And now Harrison disputes Bernie's "ignored the working class" analysis of losing to Trump. If if was not heavy white male working class voting pushing Trump to a win, who was it?
Nobody in the Harris camp went beyond touting Obamacare being in place, keep it, and not moving to a more progressive Medicare for All position.
Would that have made a difference? With or without an entire populist-progressive agenda, nobody can say.
But the fact is Harris aimed to appeal to suburban middle class voters while a;sp specifically running pro-abortion. White male working class voters went for Trump and JD, and it is speculation at best that Harris could have done anything to penetrate that bloc.
....................................
There was a time when then Congressman Keith Ellison, [D] MN, (now MN Attorney General for several terms), was fast tracked for the party DNC leadership but ended up sidetracked instead of fast tracked, by a Haim Saban muntiny and by Obama and Tom Perez (for whom the door's since revolved).
Bernie's been unlistened to since, by those running the Democratic Party. Hakim Jeffries replaced Pelosi as House leader, neither a progressive, and while they get money by the bundle, they barely won with Biden, and lost this election with Harris.
A major sized loss, and was Harris a dynamic enough campaigner commanding media attention? Or was the default Springfield, OH, Haitians taking the media attention a showing that Harris failed to generate a winning story through her campaigning? There was an initial joy that Biden stepped aside, but then what?
Bernie in the past had Bloomberg on his case, but Bloomberg is no champion of the wage laboring people, and how he got elected Mayor of New York was not as a progressive. He followed Rudy, and was an upgrade, but the bar was set extremely low by Rudy.
Would Bernie have won this time? Had he and not Biden been the incumbent? Nobody knows. But Bernie worked hard in 2020 for Biden, even after being flamed by the Clinton contingent's rigging the system in 2016.