Martin had been the frontrunner from the beginning of the race, leveraging his relationships with the more than 400 voting members of the DNC that he forged over more than a decade of work inside the institutional Democratic Party.

real cool that 400 Democrats, all part of the existing party establishment, are the only people who get to vote in this.

from May 2024: The Struggle for Democracy in the Democratic Party

Even in the age of social media, the Democratic Party remains a stubbornly closed-off enterprise. At the top, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is a private corporation, as opposed to a membership organization like a labor union, and its leaders have impunity over how they set and enforce party rules. For decades, DNC insiders have gone to war to prevent basic transparency and grassroots reform efforts from gaining steam.

from a recent Jacobin article:

“There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats, who share our values, and we will take their money,” Ken Martin, a leading candidate for Chair of the Democratic Party, said at a forum on Sunday. “But we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires.”

and from his twitter account in October 2023, quote-tweeting Twin Cities DSA "Statement of Solidarity with Palestine":

"From the river to the sea" is a chant used by extremists to support the destruction of Israel.

looks like we're in for 4 more years of the same feckless bullshit from Democrats.

Initiating thought process... .... ok I see a headline that the DNC did something and I already want to set everything on fire but I am going to do my VERY BEST to reserve the kneejerk reaction and read folx comments and the story and who this dude is.... Initial thoughts from the news story: Minnesota, huh? Is this the DNC’s new strategy? When in trouble run for Minnesota politicians? The new improved “Southern Strategy,” if you will? Also, who the hell was the chair before? A Jaime Harrison from South Carolina. Huh, I know nothing about him but I guess the news says his tenure was filled with him arguing with the White House. Wtf does the DNC even do? Break their “code of neutrality” and back shitty primary candidates no one wants. Oh, and they fund raise, ignore constituent’s needs to build campaigns that suck, and do the whole outdated convention bs. Anyway, back to this Martin dude. If the White House was unwilling to listen to Harrison then why would anyone believe a game of musical chairs would fix any of this. The issue is corruption. The democrats are rotten from the inside. The party needs a full restructuring from ground up and at this point, we are very possibly to damned late.

This is a pretty big disappointment imo, and shows that the party didn't really listen to its voters or learn from the election in any meaningful way. He was the least interesting and compelling candidate. I wish they had gone for someone with an actual ideology and values that they've lived and acted on for years---like Faiz Shakir. This role is very important, and it would have been a great way to show us that Dems actually care about us, and not just the money. But nope, they've taken yet another opportunity to give power to a bland vanilla fundraiser who almost nobody has heard of.

The race hinged more on the candidates’ organizing and fundraising resumes than on their postures regarding the ideological soul of the party, as it did in 2017, after President Donald Trump’s previous election win.

How long do y'all think it'll be before the Democratic Party is labeled as terrorists and banned