DNC Chair: Democrats Need To Stop Playing By The Rules

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin has a new idea for the downtrodden Democrat Party to start winning elections again: cheating.

“Now, look, folks, I’m sick and tired of this Democrat Party bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore,” Martin shouted during his speech at the DNC summer meeting held this week in Minneapolis. “We’ve got to stand up and fight. We’re not going to have a hand tied behind our back anymore. Let’s grow a damn spine and get in this fight, Democrats.”

Cheating is not an innovative Democrat strategy. It is the same old playbook.

It was not playing by the rules when Democrats allowed former President Joe “Autopen” Biden to remain in office as his cognitive health declined before the nation’s eyes, or when they ignored Biden’s corrupt family dealings with other countries. It was not playing by the rules when Democrats anointed Kamala Harris to take over the Democrat presidential campaign, usurping the Democrat primary process, or when she refused to answer important questions with clear, straight answers.

And it was not playing by the rules in 2016 when former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the deep state colluded to mire Trump’s first term in bogus Russian conspiracy theories.

Lying is not playing by the rules, yet it is the default setting for Democrats, who don’t care whose reputation is damaged when they mislead the public. Remember when Democrats villainized horse-mounted Border Patrol agents, lying that they used horse whips on illegal border crossers? Or when they marketed a law for parental rights in education, allowing parents to understand and object to sexually charged content taught in the classroom, as the “Don’t say gay” bill? And the hurtful lie that Trump called dead American soldiers “suckers” and “losers.”

Many voters have gotten wise and decided they don’t want to be lied to anymore.

Under Trump the stock market has rallied, companies are investing in job-creating projects, and crime is being addressed instead of ignored. But Republican success doesn’t play well at the DNC. Using socialist buzzwords, Martin painted a dire (or laughable) picture to underscore why he says the Democrat Party must win.

“This is not politics as usual, my friends. This is authoritarianism. It’s fascism in a red tie, and we, each of you in this room and all the Democrats throughout this country, we are the only thing standing in his way,” Martin warned.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also spoke. He avoided using Trump’s name, calling him, “this dude,” multiple times. Ellison highlighted more ways Democrats are currently not playing by the rules.

“Us Democratic AGs have sued this dude 44 times, and we’ll sue him 44 more, and 44 more after that,” Ellison promised, in lawsuit-looking-for-a-case fashion. Weaponizing the legal system to get your way or to slow down the agenda Americans voted for is not playing by the rules.

Again, the strategy is not new; Democrats already tried lawfare during the 2024 election, filing multiple bogus cases to burn Trump’s money, time, and reputation. They raided his Florida home searching for documents, charged him with racketeering in Georgia for looking into election results there, and socked him with 34 felony charges in New York for allegedly falsifying business records, and hit him with a half a billion dollar fine that a court erased last week. They wrongfully sent some of Trump’s associates to jail and got a mugshot of Trump that Democrats surely thought Trump would never hang on White House walls.

The lawfare has continued into Trump’s second term.

“We have sued him for gender affirming care,” Ellison bragged. “We have sued him to stand up for medical research, National Institute of Health, and we have sued him for birthright citizenship, and we have sued him to protect our environment, and we will sue him every day, and all the time, and we will be unrelenting, and I want you to know that.”

Then Ellison admitted that Democrats can’t win by the ballot box alone. The party needs lawfare and culture-bending propaganda, hidden in the entertainment people seek to get away from politics.

“I tell my friends, we’re not going to win this battle only in a courtroom. It will be at the ballot box. It will be on the streets. It will be in the courts. It will be in the playhouses and in the movie theaters, as our artists create culture to help inspire the people. We have to be multi-talented in defeating fascism, friends. We gotta use every single tool available to us. … We are the best hope for the American people, and we gotta act like it.”

Don’t play by the rules …We are the only hope … Use every tool — this is the kind of rhetoric that activates extremist nut jobs.

Maybe the Democrats should try being on the 80 percent side of 80/20 arguments, taking questions from adversarial press, thinking on their feet, looking constituents in the eyes, being authentic instead of running everything through political handlers. They should engage in verbal discourse following the rules of decorum instead of political maneuvering. They should negotiate with the aim of finding compromise where possible.

In short, if Democrats want to be successful, they should try something new: actually playing by the rules.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.