After being trounced in the November election, the Democratic Party has seemed like it’s out of new ideas.
Now, with newly elected Democratic national chairman Tom Perez trying to unite a fractured party and vowing to rebuild at all levels from “school board to the Senate” and reach out to chunks of rural America that have abandoned the leftist party, President Donald Trump weighed in with his thoughts.
And what he said was brutal —
Congratulations to Thomas Perez, who has just been named Chairman of the DNC. I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017
Ouch.
Perez, the former labor secretary under President Barack Obama, acknowledged the Democratic Party’s weakness in rural parts of the U.S. the former Obama administration ignored, saying he had heard from rural America that “Democrats haven’t been there for us recently.”
As DNC chair, Perez must now rebuild a party that in the last decade has lost about 1,000 elected posts from the White House to Congress to the 50 statehouses, a power deficit Democrats have not seen nationally in 90 years.
Perez’s election as DNC chair was a historically competitive race that took two rounds of voting — unprecedented in recent memory for either major party and highlighting deep divisions among liberals. They picked Perez, who was backed by former President Barack Obama, over Minn. Rep Keith Ellison, backed by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
As is becoming tradition for Democrats, the election featured an angry, tear-soaked crowd.
After Perez’s election was announced, there were loud boos, yells and expletives shouted from more than a few young Ellison supporters in the gallery, some of them in tears. Reaction wasn’t enthusiastic among the liberal groups that had embraced Sanders and have intensified their efforts since Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton in the November election.
Besides Trump in the Oval Office, Republicans now control Congress and about two-thirds of statehouses, and they’re one Senate confirmation vote away from a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
The Associated Press contributed to this article