Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin sees room for leftists in 'big tent' party

Ken Martin wants everyone to believe this was a meeting about spreadsheets and voter files, not a philosophical brawl. That's a nice story. It's also not quite the one his own quotes tell. When the party chair starts talking about "room for leftists" in a "big tent," that's not an infrastructure update. That's an admission that the tent has a fight going on inside it, and Martin is trying to referee it without anyone noticing he's doing it.

Democrats have run this play before. Say the quiet part is about logistics, let the loud part slip out in the Q&A. The truth is the party doesn't know what it is right now. Is it the coalition that wants to talk about kitchen-table costs, or the one that wants to relitigate every cultural fight from the last five years? Martin's answer seems to be "both, don't ask us to choose," which is a fine answer if you're trying to keep a committee meeting friendly and a terrible one if you're trying to win back voters who left because they couldn't tell what the party actually believes anymore.

We'd take the "unity" talk more seriously if it came with an actual argument for what unifies the party beyond opposition to Trump. That's not a platform, it's a mood. Voters can smell the difference between a coalition with a direction and a coalition that's just trying to keep its factions from screaming at each other in public. Right now the DNC looks a lot more like the second thing, dressed up in the language of the first.