Democrats "Bringing a Pencil to a Knife Fight," Top Dem Says
DNC Chair's unusual criticism delivered at party's first meeting since election
The Democratic Party held its first national meeting since Donald Trump’s return to office and though Chair Ken Martin got attention for admonishing the party for only bringing a “pencil to a knife fight,” the message conveyed to those attending was to stop any internal debate about the direction of the Party.
In case you’ve missed it, the Democrats are facing their lowest approval rating ever. The gerontocracy continues its stranglehold on power, with three Democratic members of Congress ages 70+ dying in office this year alone. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn’t sat down for a single interview in nearly two months, by my count. And when new leaders like Zohran Mamdani emerge, the Party can’t bring itself to endorse their own nominee.
I watched the entirety of the Democrats’ three-day summer meeting. Martin’s “pencil to a knife fight” zinger resonated on social media and frankly with myself, but it leaves me wondering: who is this knife fight taking place against?
The context for Martin’s pencil to a knife fight comment is his admission that the party of “A-student” types and lawyers solely mount a legal and procedural challenge to Trump. “We've gotta stand up and fight,” Martin says, suggesting bazookas instead. No more playing by the rules, he says, no more fighting with a “hand tied behind our backs.”
After saying “that’s right” to an attendee shouting “LFG!” (Let’s Fucking Go), Martin continued:
“Americans are hungry for leaders. They're hungry for candidates who are on the side of working people. They’re hungry for leaders who give a damn about their circumstances. And they're hungry for a government that gives people freedom, not fascism. To every American who is hungry for that kind of government, I invite you to join us. Democrats, Republicans, Independents. I invite you to join us. Together we will fight with every fiber of our being against Trump in his power hungry circus.”
Here and throughout his speech, Martin decried Trump in terms that sounded remarkably similar to the 2020 campaign. He described a battle between democracy and tyranny; freedom against fascism. Whatever you think of Trump, these are the same lofty abstractions Joe Biden leaned into heavily, summed up by one of his favorite lines: “Democracy is on the ballot.”
It was a slogan that lost. Now Martin is doubling down.
Trump, he says, is “fascism dressed in a red tie.”
“This is not politics as usual … this is authoritarianism.”
Most striking to me about Martin’s overall message is that Democrats need to stop getting into arguments with each other.
“We have to stop settling on winning arguments with each other; we have to win elections,” Martin said. The way to win, the Party leader says, is to unify behind “one single goal to stop Donald Trump … and put this country back on track.”
And how to put the country back on track? By my count, Martin uttered Trump’s name 19 times in his main address. Obviously, it makes sense that the opposition party would have some things to say about the sitting president. But he hardly mentioned major issues like housing, a word he didn’t mention at all, even though Zohran Mamdani just weeks ago campaigned to victory on it. He didn’t mention inflation either, and only said healthcare twice and inequality once.
I looked for a theme beyond condemnation of Donald Trump in his speech and I never found it.
Martin, it turns out, is more of a Politburo boss directing how the Party should work, not what policies and visions it should adopt that coincide with what the voters need. “ Winning the argument gets you maybe a nice round of applause and a few likes on Instagram,” he admonished elected leaders and online activists alike who love to fact and spell check Trump.
Describing Trump as “an insidious force hellbent on destroying our American experiment,” Martin again and again invoked an emergency that necessitated a new fight, but one based on Party discipline.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made this point even more explicitly in his speech, saying: “We do not have the luxury to fight amongst ourselves while that thing sits in the White House.”
(The irony here is that he leads a state in which the Democratic Party just days ago took the extraordinary step of withdrawing their endorsement of the Minneapolis mayoral candidate, state Senator Omar Fateh. Then there’s Mamdani, who still can’t get the endorsement of his own party’s leaders like Hakeem Jeffries, whose district Mamdani outperformed him in!)
The great ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said, “we've gotta escape to where the puck will be, not where the puck is.” Martin made reference to Gretzky in his speech, adding “sure as hell” in telling the Party that it needs to look ahead.
Saying that “the day after the last election was the first day of the 2028 campaign,” Martin said the Party needs to “build power.”
”We are investing in a 10-year majority party vision, a vision to win back government at every level within the next decade. And that's what's different. We can take back our states, our counties, our towns, our legislatures, our courts, our Congress, and yes, our country, building, working, focusing on creating new majorities every single day.”
There just isn’t a vision though. And nor is there much effort to go out and listen for one. Democratic Party leaders barely use the media to speak to the public. I pay close attention to members of Congress’ appearances on TV news, YouTube, etc. and their media engagements are a small fraction of the Republican Party’s. But more importantly, national-level leaders avoid any kind of debate on issues, that is, if the subject matter is about anything but the latest crimes of the president.
The 2024 presidential ballot was shaped by Biden and the Party apparatus and not by the voters. Throughout the first half of the year, the White House and the Party tolerated no acknowledgment of the president’s frailty. In the name of not having any debate, the Party squashed any primary challenges to Biden and then left no time (or way) for a viable candidate to emerge, anointing Kamala Harris instead. The Democratic Party met this past week and emerged with an exact repeat, a strict adherence to where the puck was in a losing game.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
I'm continually texted by Dem party organizations and candidates telling me how bad things are and what they are going to stand for, if only I will send money. No organized action, no history of same. Their collective inability seems a feature and not a bug.
Good job, Ken, a very good job, thank you. But in addition to housing, in addition to health care, where is there mention of that utterly obscene $1+ trillion dollar "defense" budget, that $4+ billion US TAXPAYERS give to that fornicating Israel each year to kill Palestinian children, exterminate them all? Start talkin' that kind of language, Ken Martin, and maybe I and a few others will bother listening to you.