Rep. Ellison Charts Course For Democratic Party Success After 2016 Failures

By: video by Bill Sorem, Text by Michael McIntee | August 8, 2017

Rep. Keith Ellison (DFL-MN) doesn’t mince words about why the Democrats lost the White House in 2016.

“They forgot Wisconsin was a state”, Ellison told activists gathered from all over the country at the Democracy Convention in Minneapolis. He noted that nearly all of Hillary Clinton’s travels during the general election campaign were to just 15 battleground states and that did not include Wisconsin which Trump won by a narrow margin.

Ellison says even in those battleground states, Democrats targeted just a few battleground counties. He says such a narrow data-driven approach is a mistake. “We don’t see politics as engaging community. We see politics as just doing as little as we can to win.”

As the Democratic party’s new deputy chair, Ellison has the bully pulpit and some pull to make changes.

Engaging the grass roots, Ellison says, is the key to victory. “If you’re looking for a direction, go to the people. They will tell you what they need. They will tell this economy sucks. They will tell you they can’t make a living in this thing. They will tell you ‘jobs, jobs, yeah no problem with the jobs. I got three of them. All paying $7.25 an hour.’”

“We need a government of, by and for the people and right now folks it’s not.”

Democrats need to address racism and income inequality says Ellison. “Human solidarity is the key. Acknowledging that this society has privileged some and disadvantaged others in order to divide both. And if we will confront that, we can fix that. But if we don’t confront that, we are, I believe, in very tough shape.”

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