The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, is available on July 31, 2025 outside of Woodlawn coffee and pastries in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom)
Portland, Oregon Democrats must be more aggressive organizers and activists to regain the coalition of the working class, which according to Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, have increasingly lost to President Donald Trump.
Too often the party has put the Republicans on the foundation stone in recent decades, Martin said the status of newsroom in a one -on -one interview on July 31 during a stop during a visit to community groups, activists and donations in Oregon.
The national party’s infrastructure has deteriorated since 2009, so that the GOP builds organizational advantages throughout the country, define democratic candidates before they can define themselves and bring too many states out of reach.
In sometimes more combative terms than by someone with Martin’s immaculate company look and the middle west could be expected of midwestern, he said that his task as party leader was to reverse this trend.
“We are not here to bind one of our hands behind our back,” said Martin. “In the past, I think that our party would bring a pencil to a knife fight. We will bring a weapon to a knife fight.”
The analogy of the knife fight was an answer to a question of how Democrats should react to the Republicans in Texas who have re-drawn the limits of the congress district because the GOP is struggling to keep its slim US house majority, but it could apply to other aspects of Martin’s vision for the party.
Martin, which the Democrats chose for the next four years in February, said the Democrats should never switch off their news and campaign apparatus and work on building the party infrastructure in regions, states and cities in which they have not participated for decades.
For more than 45 minutes, he called the behind schedule US Senator Paul Wellstone, a liberal, whose populist approach to the election campaign and government practically sanctified him among the Democrats in Martin’s native of Minnesota, several times and stated that Wellstone 2024 and beyond would be an effective model for democrats.
“I think what the American people are looking for are people who get up and fight for what they believe in,” he said. “People didn’t always agree with Paul Wellstone, but they still voted for him. They said …” He is not one of these politicians. You want authenticity. “
Texas redistribution
The day after the Republicans in Texas had published a card with the proposed up-to-date congress districts in a occasional redistribution in the middle of the decades that were able to take five other US house seats, Martin implied that he would support the leaders of the Blausstate, who cleared up with their own maps to give Democrats an advantage if he conducted the move through the Republicans.
He called the redistribution of Trump and the Republicans “a longing grave of power” and accused them of “trying to equip the system”.
“If you can’t win alone, you will cheat and steal,” he said. “This is essentially what you are doing.”
But even when Martin condemned these movements, he said that the Democrats should be able to react to benefits in kind. “We can’t be the only party that plays according to the rules,” he said.
The leading Democrats in California, New York and Illinois have openly examined the possibility of redistribution of emergencies when the planned card becomes final in Texas, even though the problem has applied the request I would have some common allies support the fewer partisan selection infrastructure.
The national party would be “very involved” to question the map in Texas and to work with governors who want to change their own cards, said Martin.
Never stop campaigning campaigns
Martin told some of his party’s challenges without being asked.
Twice as many voters had an unfavorable view of the Democrats as economical in a July Wall Street journal in July Opinion poll The party showed this with only 33% of the support.
The voters now see Republicans as a party of the working class as representatives of the elite, said Martin. In the 2024 elections, the party was bad with almost all other windows of the electorate than with college-trained voters and wealthy voters.
Martin noted that Trump made historical progress with some time-honored democratic constituencies and in 2024 a higher proportion of Latino, Black, Asia and Pacific islanders, boys and workers’ voters earned as every Republican candidate in years.
This result was part of a persistent trend that died 20 years ago, said Martin and represents an existential threat to the Democratic Party.
“We lost the ground with every part of our coalition,” he said. “If we continue to lose ground with working people in this country, with all other parts of our coalition, we are toast. We have to reverse the course.”
The film of the Democrats with these constituencies is partly “a branding problem”, which through the party’s willingness to allow Trump and other Republicans in off-Year campaigns to be unanswered and to lack a positive message that has articulated to the voters.
“We only started our campaign in spring 2024 – far too late,” he said. “I would argue that they had already defined us before we ever had the chance to define ourselves. That can never happen again. Never, never, never. So that means that we have to be campaign all year round. We organize all year round all year round.
“We all do it better”
This campaign should concentrate on a positive view of what Democrats offer to the voters, and contain an appeal to “the majority of the Americans, not just the people at the top”.
“We have to repair our brand,” said Martin. “We have to give people the feeling that we are fighting for them. We have to get up and fight with everything we have, not only against Donald Trump, but for something. We have to give people a positive idea of what their lives with those responsible would look like.”
The Democrat’s message was supposed to be an increasing flood that raises all boats, said Martin and quoted Wellstone, for which the 52 -year -old Martin was interned at the beginning of his career and is still looking at inspiration.
“Remember Paul’s famous slogan: ‘We all do it better if we do it better,” he said. “That should be the slogan of the Democratic Party.”
He praised Zohran Mamdani, the winner of the Democratic Mayor of New York Mayor, an energetic campaign that focused on showing how he could improve the life of the New Yorkers.
This should include a political focus on affordability, access to health care and a government that works for people beyond the elite.
But even when Martin articulated the positive message to which he said that the Democrats should concentrate, he slipped into Trump and the Republicans’ slinging and said the tax and the expenditure of the Trump law signed last month would keep people’s health care away. The law was the least popular for decades, he noticed.
It was space for a positive campaign and emphasized that the Republicans were unpopular, Martin said.
“It is both/and”, “he said. “Let us tell people what happens and let us tell people what Democrats will do.”
Senate within reach?
The Unpopular from The law of Republicans, which is expected to reduce more than 1 trillion dollar over 10 years from Medicaid, Food Markers and other programs and at the same time reduces taxes on high earners, gives the Democrat an opening in a arduous cycle for the US senate races, said Martin.
Control Democrat-Die 47 seats, including two independent, compared to 53 for Republicans who also hold a mood of the Vice President at Vice President JD Vance, four additional seats will have to be used in the next year to win the majority in the chamber, which was possible under the right circumstances.
This view is not in step with Current projectionsThe democratic seats in Georgia and Michigan show that they are at least as likely as likely as republican seats in North Carolina and Maine. Democrats would have to win all four of these most competitive races and two more routes to win a majority.
Beyond North Carolina and Maine, Martin said the map to the Democrats that regained the Senate would traditionally go through red states.
Iowa, where the reigning Senator Joni could be vulnerable, and Alaska, where the former US representative Mary Peltola would be a sturdy challenger of the reigning Republican Dan Sullivan, could be the 50th and 51st Senate seats of the Democrats.
Or if right-wing primary challengers defeat more established incumbents in Louisiana and Texas, these states could turn into the pick-up options, Trump’s obtained easily said by more than 20 points in the former.
Growth of the party, growth of the card
In order to win next year and beyond, the Democrats have to unite, he said.
Elements of the party that would impose other purity tests – whether it is progressive that are excluded with moderate or vice versa – he said.
“I think they gain elections through addition and not the subtraction,” he said. “You win by introducing people to new voices and expanding their coalition.”
Martin would also like to expand the map and compete across the country, with a strategy that had pioneering work from the former DNC chairman Howard Dean, which was chairman from 2005 to 2009.
When the political team of President Barack Obama took control of the party apparatus in 2009, it had “completely withdrawn” the infrastructure of the state party, said Martin.
At the beginning of this year he announced an initiative to provide it at least $ 1 million per month to all state parties. The aim is to expand the number of competitive countries and districts and reverse a trend in which fewer presidential competitions were aligned with fewer countries.
“There is no eternal red state or an eternal blue condition,” he said. States of republican strongholds to competitive or from the competition against Democrats – or even to maintain democratic strength – invest money and energy, he said.
“It is critical and it is something I believe in,” he said. I have seen for so many years that our national party and other party committees have made investments in order to actually describe themselves as a national party.
