Tom Perez is elected leader of a party in crisis

By V.v.B. | CHICAGO

TOM PEREZ is taking over the leadership of the Democratic Party at one of the lowest points in its 189-year history. Since 2009 the party has lost more than 1,000 state legislature seats, more than a dozen governor’s mansions and numerous city halls. Its defeat at the presidential election in November was as painful as it was unexpected. It is deeply divided between a progressive wing led by Bernie Sanders, a self-professed socialist senator from Vermont, and the party’s establishment, of which Mr Perez is a proper part.

“I know that Tom Perez will unite us under that banner of opportunity, and lay the groundwork for a new generation of Democratic leadership for this big, bold, inclusive, dynamic America we love so much,” said Barack Obama in a statement shortly after Mr Perez’s election on February 25th. The former president had not explicitly endorsed Mr Perez, who served as his secretary of labour for almost five years, but Mr Obama was widely assumed to favour him among the nine candidates for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). His vice-president, Joe Biden, and his attorney-general, Eric Holder, had come out in favour of Mr Perez.

After falling one vote short in the first ballot, Mr Perez was elected in the second round of voting at the Atlanta Convention Centre where members of the DNC had gathered. His closest rival was Keith Ellison, a congressman from Minnesota, who was backed by Mr Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, a populist senator from Massachusetts. To appease the progressive wing of the party—and to harness the youth and energy of its supporters—Mr Perez announced shortly after his election that Mr Ellison would be his deputy. Appealing to his own visibly disheartened supporters—who had chanted “Party for the people, not big money!” when Mr Perez was announced as the winner—Mr Ellison said that if they trust him, “they need to come on and trust Tom Perez as well”.

Democrats hope Mr Perez’s election will mark the end of a rocky period for the DNC. It started last year when Russians hacked the DNC’s computer system. Its leaked e-mails revealed that the party leadership had tried to undermine Mr Sanders when he seemed like a threat to Hillary Clinton’s success in the Democratic primary elections and nomination as the party’s presidential candidate. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the previous DNC chairwoman, resigned in the wake of the revelations. She was replaced by an interim chair, Donna Brazile, a political analyst and long-time Democratic insider.

Mr Perez hails from a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Mr Ellison is a black Muslim and Ms Brazile is a black Catholic. The ethnic background of the top brass of the DNC reflect what could become the party’s biggest source of strength: their popularity in Latino, black and other minority communities. “We need a chair who can not only take the fight to Donald Trump, but make sure that we talk about our positive message of inclusion and opportunity and talk to that big tent of the Democratic Party,” said Mr Perez in a speech to the more than 400 members of the DNC. He presented himself as the leader who can help the party overcome its “crisis of confidence, a crisis of relevance”.

Mr Perez will only be able to fight Mr Trump effectively with a united party behind him. Naming Mr Ellison his deputy was a clever move, but more will be needed to keep the energised progressives on board. He has not yet said whether he will conduct an “autopsy”, as the Republicans did after they lost the presidential election in 2012. But he vowed to change the DNC’s internal culture and to connect with progressive groups, including unions and grassroots groups that are sprouting up across the country.

It will be an uphill battle for the Democratic Party, still shell-shocked by its defeat in November. And it will take time. Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s Democratic mayor, recently said at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business that his fellow Democrats need to take a “chill pill”; in his view they are unlikely to retake Congress at the mid-term election in 2018. “You gotta be in this for the long haul,” said Mr Emanuel. He then urged Democrats to cease their infighting. “Stop it. We’re not strong enough to do that,” he said. Mr Perez’s most important job at the moment is to unify his troops unequivocally. Only then can the Democrats be the effective opposition party America needs as it navigates uncharted waters with Donald Trump as its president.