Democrats don't learn from history

Last Saturday, the Democratic National Committee’s 447 members gathered in Atlanta to elect a new national chairman from a field of seven candidates.

It was the first time since 1985 that there was a contested election for the position.

Although seven candidates had their names on the ballot, only two of them had any chance of winning.

Tom Perez, secretary of labor under President Obama, also has ties to the Clinton organization and had the backing of such political luminaries as Joe Biden and Eric Holder.

Keith Ellison claimed the endorsement of Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer as well as the backing of noted film documentarian Michael Moore.

After the first ballot the two candidates who had 200 or more votes were Perez with 213.5, and Ellison with 200 votes.

Perez fell one vote shy of the 50 percent required to claim victory. The remaining five candidates dropped out at that point, guaranteeing a second ballot victory to either Perez or Ellison.

The prize went to Perez, who immediately named Ellison as the deputy chairman of the party.

Perez had the backing of the Obama/Clinton faction. This is the same group that engineered the election of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to the chairmanship. Wasserman-Schultz, you will remember, was ignominiously removed from her position when it was discovered she had led the effort to fix the outcome of the Democratic primary for Hillary with assistance from former DNC Chairman and CNN News analyst Donna Brazile.

Ellison was the favorite of a group led by a purported independent who ran for president on the Democratic ticket and is even further to the left than the Obama/Clinton faction. In a further sign of political unity, Sen. Sanders is once again recognized as an “independent who caucuses with the Democrats”.

In a video-taped message to the gathering, Hillary Clinton assured the members that what was needed was “resistance plus persistence.” The plus persistence part implied that Democrats needed to continue down the same path that led them to defeat in 2016. What Hillary seems to believe they need is not more of the same, but an additional helping of more of the same.

Many Democrats will take her parting pledge of, “I’ll be with you every step of the way” as a threat rather than a promise of assistance.

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel pronounced that, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” With any luck at all, Democrats haven’t read Hegel.

Rube Render is the Curry County Republican chairman. Contact him at:

[email protected]