DNC in a race to the bottom

OPINION:

Once they get over their post-election pout (and even if they can’t, and don’t), the Democrats must choose a new chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The two top contenders, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, represent that great distinction without a difference.

The “centrist Democrats,” like the Blue Dogs, who were once numerous enough to have their own congressional caucus, have gone either to the graveyard or to a hideout in a universe far, far away.

The party is teetering on the edge of a black hole in that universe, and there’s no evidence that either Mr. Perez or Mr. Ellison are ready, willing or able to tug the party back from the edge. There’s no one capable of forging a common-sense agenda with an appeal to voters in the flyover country between the two coasts, where Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election. That leaves in place a radical social agenda in thrall to the LGBT and pro-abortion lobbies, with a foreign policy that runs from feckless to reckless.

There are actually five candidates for chairman, and The Washington Post, the arbiter of Democratic politics, observes that “there’s little ideological disagreement” among the unholy quintet. “None has challenged the left-wing rewrite of the Democratic Party platform.” The Democrats have learned nothing from Nov. 8, and continue to revel in a riotous blame party, with Russians hackers, FBI Director James Comey, WikiLeaks, “fake news” and everyone but themselves held responsible for the debacle.

The hopes of the three dark horses rest on the prospect that neither Mr. Perez nor Mr. Ellison can command a majority of the 437 members of the national committee, and that one of the three emerges as a compromise candidate when the committee votes in late February.

Mr. Ellison’s chief qualification to lead a party besotted by identity politics is that he’s black and would be the first Muslim chairman of the party. His embrace of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, since conveniently disavowed, is apparently not the deal-breaker among Democrats that it would have been only yesterday.

Mr. Ellison has the support of Sens. Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — both of whom send something crawling up the left legs of the deepest-dyed Democrats. This is thought to give Mr. Ellison that leg up in the contest.

Mr. Perez, who endorsed Hillary Clinton over Mr. Sanders for the nomination, is regarded favorably by the liberals of liberals because of his record at the Justice and Labor departments. But that support is regarded skeptically by party activists still seething at Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former DNC chief, for rigging the primary process to favor Hillary, and on whose watch the party’s congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative ranks have been decimated.

The contest for party chairman is shaping up as a fierce and bitter intraparty battle with a lot of blame-slinging over who’s responsible for the bus/train/airplane wreck. The ultimate blame, of course, is Barack Obama’s. He wrecked the party, leaving it with a legacy of anti-Semitism and increased rancor between the races, and offering as solace only his fanciful boast that he would have won a third term but for the constitutional prohibition on third terms. Mr. Obama will deliver his farewell address next week, but no one expects a mea culpa. There’s likely to be only an abundance of congratulations from the man the president admires most.