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BERNIE SANDERS’S EX-CAMPAIGN MANAGER WANTS TO REBUILD DEMOCRATIC
PARTY: ‘WHAT NEW IDEAS ARE WE BRINGING?’  
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Joan E Greve
January 30, 2025
Guardian
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_ Faiz Shakir launched a last-minute bid for DNC chair and wants to
mold it in to a working class, inclusive organization _

Faiz Shakir, screen grab

 

Fed up with the status quo, former Bernie Sanders
[[link removed]] campaign manager
Faiz Shakir launched an 11th-hour bid to become the next chair of the
Democratic National Committee and is pitching a message focused on the
working class to help the party rebuild itself.

“I got into this race late in the game because I felt that a lot of
candidates [for DNC chair] are now talking about the Democratic
[[link removed]] party wanting to be a
working-class party, and I’ve been excited for this for the better
part of a decade,” Shakir told the Guardian.

With his experience running Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and
serving as the national political director of the American Civil
Liberties Union, Shakir believes he is best suited to lead Democrats
as they process their dismal performance in the November elections and
brace for another four years of Donald Trump
[[link removed]] in the White House.

“The question to my mind now is that if there is consensus around
the working class confronting oligarchy, then what new ideas are we
bringing to the table in how we utilize the power and authority of the
DNC?” Shakir said. “My election would send the strongest message
that we’re doing something different.”

Shakir faces an uphill battle to capture the chair position. He only
announced his candidacy earlier this month, while the frontrunners in
the race – Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota
Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, and Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin
Democratic party – have been campaigning for two months. Ahead of
the leadership elections on Saturday, Martin claims
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have already secured the support of at least 200 DNC members, which
would put him within striking distance of a winning majority, although
his opponents have questioned
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whip count.

Despite those challenges, Shakir chose to enter the chair race in part
because of what he described as a “lack of ambition and a sense of
powerlessness about what the DNC could potentially do” among the
declared candidates. He is determined to re-envision the mechanics and
the purpose of the DNC, which has in recent years served as an
administrative body focused on fundraising, coordinating across state
parties and setting ground rules for presidential primaries.

“When Democrats
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president in charge, it is often the case that [the DNC] is working at
the behest of the president of the United States,” Shakir said.
“But now when we don’t have the presidency, you take that
structure and you say, ‘What is the most important thing that we
have to do?’”

The answer to that question is two-pronged, in Shakir’s view. The
first is to transform the DNC into a more inclusive, grassroots-driven
organization with a mission to better the lives of average Americans.

“Can we open the doors and let people in? Can we start from the
premise that this is a people-powered organization?” Shakir said.
“That we could be and should be in service to others beyond
ourselves, that is the core of what I would believe as a kind of
organizing philosophy of the Democratic party right now to rebuild the
brand.”

The other component of Shakir’s pitch involves a subject with which
he is deeply familiar: media. In 2021, Shakir founded the progressive
non-profit news outlet More Perfect Union
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power for the working class”. Since its founding, More Perfect Union
has produced viral content on everything from fast fashion
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Uber drivers [[link removed]]. More
Perfect Union’s YouTube channel
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million subscribers four years after its creation, while the DNC’s
YouTube channel [[link removed]] has roughly
77,000 subscribers despite launching 14 years earlier.

“They don’t value the channels as important properties of trying
to talk to people because they aren’t a grassroots organization by
nature,” Shakir said.

In the wake of Democrats’ losses in November, it has become
conventional wisdom that the party has a “media problem”, but
Shakir frames the issue as more of a platform and messaging problem.
He accused the DNC of over relying on gimmicky language rather than
presenting a concrete strategy to confront an unjust economy, and he
pointed to More Perfect Union’s coverage of efforts to cancel
medical debt
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employees [[link removed]] as a
potential template for how the party can use content to send a
pro-worker message to voters.

“Those kinds of things help build the case and the mandate for the
direction of what the Democratic party would be if it came back into
power and deliver us good content too,” Shakir said. “If you’re
telling those stories, I tend to think those videos would do a hell of
a lot better on YouTube than whatever [the DNC] is posting right
now.”

Shakir presented a similar argument when asked about Democrats’
attacks on Trump during his first days back in office, as the party
has publicly wrestled with the question of how much of its attention
should be spent on condemning the new administration’s every move
versus presenting a positive vision for the future of the country.
Shakir implored Democrats to link their larger pitch for building a
pro-worker economy with their criticism of Trump’s policy proposals.

Can we start from the premise that this is a people-powered
organization?

Using Trump’s proposed tax cuts as an example, Shakir predicted that
Republicans’ expected legislation may include some policies to
improve workers’ lives “on the margins”, such as maintaining the
increased child tax credit or eliminating taxes on tips. In Shakir’s
view, that possibility makes it even more imperative for Democrats to
show voters how Trump’s tax plan would disproportionately
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the wealthiest Americans at the expense of investing in critical
services such as healthcare, childcare and education. Shakir
summarized the argument as: “For every penny you get, he thinks Elon
Musk gets $20.

“Now we’re fighting on the terrain,that Democrats want to be
fighting on, to say: ‘What are you doing for improving a
middle-class life? How does that get any easier when the tax breaks
that you’ve doled out have gone so disproportionately to the
wealthy?’” Shakir said.

Before he can implement that vision, however, Shakir will need to win
enough support to become DNC chair. He acknowledged he has encountered
some challenges as he courts DNC members, many of whom have long
working relationships with state party chairs such as Martin and
Wikler. As he tries to break through as a late entrant in a tough
race, Shakir has asked members to consider the ramifications of their
decision beyond the committee itself.

“The nation is calling upon the Democratic party to say, ‘Hey, we
need you,’” Shakir said. “I’m trying to fight the notions of
insularity among groups of people who understandably are focused on
reforming structures within the DNC. But we’ve got to think beyond
the DNC.”

_Joan E Greve is a senior political reporter for Guardian US, based in
Washington. Follow her on Twitter [[link removed]]_

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* Faiz Shakir
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* Democratic Party
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* Bernie Sanders
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* Politics
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