The pundits may say Democrats are still "licking their wounds" from their 2024 defeats, but the recent Democrat meeting on February 1 focusing on how they must have a "non-binary" representative was underplayed by the media. Joe Klein used to be a prominent TV pundit and Newsweek columnist who loved Bill Clinton's more moderate style. On his Substack, he lamented the party now displays a "vast cluelessness."
[Hat tip: Gabriel Hays at FoxNews.com]
Underlining the DEI obsessions within the party, outgoing DNC chair Jamie Harrison attempted to explain there had to be a non-binary candidate for the Vice Chair position.
I can't believe what I just listened to. The DNC Leader interrupted the party election to tell members that not enough non-binary candidates have been elected, so they MUST now vote for one.
— George (@BehizyTweets) February 1, 2025
"With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two… pic.twitter.com/8CelMVzyE6
Later in the program, an audience member stood up to lament that there was only one at-large seat set aside for a transgender person, and called on the candidates to add another seat and for “making sure those appointments reflect the gender and ethnic diversity of the transgender community.” Only one candidate raised his hand to indicate he wouldn’t make such a commitment.
"Yes, friends, still crazy after all these years…and the encroaching dementia is not benign. Can this party be saved? I have my doubts," Klein wrote. "The intellectual corrosion is comprehensive; it is only matched by the self-righteous arrogance. But what’s the alternative? I’ve been through Dems in Disarray syndrome multiple times in the past: in 1972, in 1980, in 1988, in 2016…but, gotta say, this is the worst I’ve ever seen it. There is a vast cluelessness abroad in the party. Its prevailing vision of an America based on identity now resides in the outhouse."
Joe Klein can't get on MSNBC with that take. That is not how the media treated it. Take "public" broadcasting. On February 4, NPR's All Things Considered brought on newly elected DNC chair Ken Martin, and didn't consider the party is too far to the left and too obsessed with DEI. Host Juana Summers mostly asked about resisting Trump. Her last question came the closest: "Defining who that party is, what it stands for, is something that has bedeviled so many people who have sat in your seat. How do you make the case to voters who want to support you that elected Democrats have their backs, given what we've seen in the last election cycle, where those working-class voters that you just talked about, who used to reliably vote Democratic, they've chosen a different path?"
On the PBS NewsHour, they waited almost a whole week before discussing the DNC meeting. That's because PBS analyst Jonathan Capehart was an MSNBC host at the meeting. He mentioned the discussing about the ethnicity within the transgender community, and screaming climate protesters.
CAPEHART: Faiz Shakir, a friend of PBS News Hour, was the only person the stage who did not raise his hand on the transgender question. There was also one on the question for seats for Muslim DNC members.
He said, I don`t think we should be dividing people up by identity. We should focus on people who are up for the mission and the program of the DNC and have them bring their identity to the table.
He's absolutely right. And then with the protesters, Jason Paul said, this is the way people in the country view the Democratic Party, and that is our problem.
That's why I say the policy isn't the problem. Democrats have policies that address the American people's issues. It's the perception. And that is what Ken Martin has to do.
If this meeting created more perception problems, you can understand why it was energetically downplayed.
