[photos]

DNC Winter Meeting

Marriott Marquis Washington, D.C.

February 14-16, 2019

SCHEDULE OF DNC EVENTS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Thursday, February 14th

Friday, February 15th

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM	Executive Committee
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM	Rules & Bylaws Committee
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM	AAPI Caucus
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Black Caucus
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Hispanic Caucus
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Native American Caucus
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Ethnic Council
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM	Welcome Reception

Saturday, February 16th

8:00 AM - 9:30 AM	Black History Month Breakfast
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM	Eastern Regional Caucus
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM	Southern Regional Caucus
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM	Western Regional Caucus
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM	Midwestern Regional Caucus
12:00PM - 3:00 PM	General Session

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Chairman Tom Perez
 DNC Winter Meeting
General Session
Marriott Marquis
Washington, DC
February 16, 2019

[DEMOCRACY IN ACTION Transcript  |  C-SPAN video]

Alright!  We are just getting started my friends and we've got a long way to go, and we're going to get there.  Good afternoon, everyone.  It's an honor to be with you.  That video, I want to start out by thanking all the women across America who stepped up.  On January, the 21st 2017, they said, this is not just a moment this is a movement, and we know now that we have a movement moment. 100 years after getting the right to vote, we have the largest female representation in the history of the House of Representatives, thanks to the Democrats.

And we have at the helm of that House a person who wiill go down in my humble opinion, as the most impactful speaker in the history of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. And a former DNC member, I might add.  Thank you, Speaker Pelosi. 

You know what folks.  I start with Speaker Pelosi because yesterday you may recall we opened up our session with the moment of silence marking the anniversary of the tragic and all too preventable shooting in Parkland.  And now, as you know, there was another shooting in a town called Aurora; not Aurora, Colorado, the scene of a different shooting.  Aurora, Illinois.  The scene of another shooting that took the lives of five Americans and injured six others, five of whom were law enforcement officers.
 
And I'm confident that there are Republicans out there saying our thoughts and prayers are with them.  But I'll tell you, under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and our new member of Congress Lucy McBath, we're not doing just thoughts and prayers.  We're taking action.  And earlier this week in the Judiciary Committee of the United States House, they were marking up a bill to address gun violence, the gun violence national emergency.  That's what they were doing.
 
Thank you.  Speaker Pelosi.

Thank you.  Congresswoman McBath.

Thank you to all the House members, stepping up on this critically important issue.

And thank you everybody in this room for stepping up in a moment in time when our democracy is on fire.

This was a historic, 2017, and 2018 election cycle.  I also know that there are some new folks here today because with elections often come transitions to new leadership, not only in the United States House, where we have not only a member of the U.S. House leadership, but also a DNC member in the room, Barbara Lee from the great state of California.  Congresswoman Lee, can you stand up?
 
Thank you for what you're doing.  We are getting woke because of you.

And I'd also like to invite our new chairs and vice chairs—we've had some transition in a number of states—I'd love to have any new chair o r vice chair stand up so that we could give you a warm welcome from the DNC family.
 
Thank you so much.

We have a new chair and vice chair from my home state of Maryland.  Welcome, we're glad to have you.  Welcome to the family.
 
We got a lot of work to do my friends.

Can we also give it up for Unite Local 25?  They kept this place going; they are continuing to do great work.  The labor movement, as I say often, they brought us the weekend, they brought us the middle class, they brought us prosperity; they take grief in states and courts around this country, and they keep fighting back and fighting back and fighting back.  Because that's in their DNA.  We have the largest number of members from the labor movement ever on the DNC right now because I believe in the labor movement.  Ted Kennedy taught me, How do you spell success?  U-N-I-O-N.  That's how he spelled it. That's how I spell it.  And that's how Democrats spell it.

I'll tell you folks.  Let me just read you a few headlines from that cycle 2018.


Now the reason I ended with that last one is I have a small problem with it.  Here it is.  Democrats weren't given anything.  We fought for it.  We organized for it.  We invested early; we invested everywhere.  We fielded spectacular candidates, and we fielded spectacular candidates for reelection, like Barbara Lee and so many others, and we all did this together.  We weren't Bowling Alone; we were an ecosystem, working together, every oar in the water rowing in synchrony.
 
You think about this for a moment.  The last time we got together as a group in Chicago, a guy named Scott Walker was still the governor.  Today we have Tony Evers as governor in Wisconsin.
And you know who was the governor in Michigan; he ain't there anymore because we have Gretchen Whitmer.  We have a governor who is a Democrat in Kansas.  As I said yesterday, what's the matter with Kansas? Not a damn thing; they're are electing Democrats.  That's what we're doing, not only in the governor's residence but in Congress, and New Mexico, and Illinois and Nevada, and the great state of Maine.  That's what we're doing, folks.

Last time we got together the Republicans controlled the House; they controlled all too many state houses, but because of you, because of Democrats across this country, there are many, many more powerful voices here in Washington and elsewhere to call out this president for his temper tantrums.  Like the one he is throwing now, with his manufactured border crisis and gross abuse of power.

The last time we gathered it seemed like he was implementing this policies with abandon.  Now we watch Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer control him in Congress.  That's progress folks.  You know the old movement song of the civil rights movement, We fall down, but we get up.  We fell down in 2016, but we got up.   We got up with purpose, we got up with conviction, and we got up and we won, not only taking back the House, eight state houses flipped.  If Joe Biden were here, he say that's a BFD. 

You know we win something like 41 seats in 10 state houses in the coming cycle we flip those state houses.  Almost 400 seats flipped.  That's real money folks.  This is about redistricting, making a difference, having control.  These numbers are indeed historic.  We know the importance of secretaries of state and attorneys general, and we worked hard to elect more of them.  The majority of attorneys general in this country are now Democrats. And this president will find out again, when a lawsuit is filed by some of them, involving what he did yesterday.  And then left to go golfing, I might add.

We elected the first Muslim and Native American women to Congress, the youngest woman member of Congress, again, remarkable progress the first two African American women from New England, and we lifted to victory in Colorado the first openly gay man in American history.

Again, that's a big deal, folks, and it didn't happen overnight.  It happened because we were intentional.  When we got here we, said we must get back to our 57 state model; we must understand that the old accordion model, where we were just here to elect the president every four years was not a model of success.  That was a model of failure, and we endured way too much failure, preventable failure.  Well the new DNC there's no such thing as an off year, as you saw. 

We were so proud to make unprecedented investments in our midterm elections in this cycle and you heard from our colleague, Elaine Kamarck yesterday, those investments made a difference. And we're able to get out there.  Our goal was to rebuild our infrastructure and rebuild trust, and we did just that. 

We were able to raise record amounts of money during the cycle over $100 million in grassroots fundraising, with an average donation of $37.  We haven't done that before.  47% of online donors in this last cycle gave for the first time.  That is remarkable.

Our large dollar fundraising was the best it's ever been.  People stepped up, whether it was with $10 or $10,000 they stepped up big time because they understood that we were in a moral crisis.
That we were in a fork in the road, and we needed help. 

So we're halfway up the mountain top, and as someone who moved to DC from Colorado, I understand that the second half of the climb is harder than the first half.  So we have to understand that while we've had success, we have much more work to do. 

Last year was indeed the most important election of our lifetime at a mid term level, and now we are moving into the most important election of our lifetime for president, because he will be a one term president.  That is a fact.

That is an economic imperative, that is a national security imperative, and frankly, folks, it's a moral imperative; ir's moral imperative around the world, because we know, we must make sure we defeat this president. 

And in order to do that we have been taking steps.  We took steps last August, to make sure we're continuing to earn the trust of voters, and return power to the grassroots, and we're continuing our efforts now.  Our primary process, our primary election process has begun.  We will have multiple candidates in the field, double digit candidates, without a doubt.  I welcome that.  They are all spectacular people; their values are our values.  We're not going to be talking about hand size, we're going to be talking about health care in this debates process. That's what we're going to be doing folks.

And what we are doing at the DNC is making sure that we have a primary process that is fair and even handed to everyone.  [If] we have 15 people running 14 aren't going to make it the mountaintop, and we need to make sure that every single one of their supporters, and the candidates feels like they got a fair shake.
 
And what we also have to do is make sure that we're investing in our infrastructure, making sure that every single person is touched, making sure we have an organizing infrastructure in place, and we do it now, not 18 months from now; making sure we have a voter protection infrastructure in place.  You heard the imperative from Stacy,.  We know that cheating is a permanent part of their playbook.  And they will continue to cheat.  They will continue to enlist foreign agents and deny it.
They will continue to try to suppress the vote.  So we must build that, that infrastructure.  We must build a millennial engagement infrastructure.  It was remarkable that young people turnout went up by over 50%.  That's the good news.  The challenge that remains is roughly two in three young people sat home in this 2018 cycle. They are our voters.  We must reach out.  We must build those relationships, and we can build those relationships.

I am so appreciative of my friend and colleague Ken Martin, and everybody in our state parties, we came together, understanding that we are at our best when we're together.  We've already ratified our state party partnership for 2019 and 2020, continuing our unprecedented investments in state parties, so that we can build that infrastructure for success.  We know that it's not only about the 2012 election for president, but it's about the 2019 election for state Supreme Court in Wisconsin, it's about the 2019 election for governor in Louisiana where we will elect, reelect john Bel Edwards, where we will elect governors in Mississippi.  We will elect governor, a Democrat, in Kentucky.

People sometimes look at me and say Tom you can't do that.  And my response to them is, you told us we couldn't do an Alabama, and we did it.  You told us we couldn't elect Democrats in Oklahoma, and we did it.  We did it in South Carolina.  We did it across this country, Kansas and elsewhere.  We can win everywhere.  That's the lesson of this most recent cycle.  When we organize everywhere and we field great candidates everywhere, and we give them a data infrastructure that enables them to succeed and understand the voter with clarity.
 
And that is why again, what we have done in the last week to solidify our commitment to state of the art data infrastructure is game changing.  When we empower presidential candidates and candidates for school board, and everyone in between, with the modern tools of data and analytics, and when we create opportunities to ensure that the learning that takes place across the ecosystem by the various organizations that knock on doors and gather information, that there's an opportunity for sharing—that's the definition of synergy.  And that is why it is so important.  And that is why I firmly believe that with the agreements that we have made, and the investments we continue to make, we are moving closer and closer, every single day to winning the White House.  The work we do this year will determine in no small measure whether we win next year.  And we're working our tails off, we're working together, and we're working effectively.  Thanks to everybody involved in that.  This is indeed a very, very important part of our process.  And I am—  Thank you; man I agree with you.
 
And folks, we announced earlier this week our primary debate schedule.  It's unprecedented.  NBC MSNBC, Telemundo, live stream.  As I said earlier, if you watch your TV or anything on your gadget, or if you still got rabbit ears and no cable or if you're addicted to cable, doesn't matter.  You have a way to watch.  Our goals are simple.  We want to maximize eyeballs.  Because the more people that watch our candidates, the more convinced I am they'll vote for our candidates.  The more people that understand our values, the more people that will vote Democratic.

We want to make sure that we give this forum for Democrats to tell their story, to give their vision. And we wanted to make sure that we provided entry points to the debate stage that weren't simply polling.  And our emphasis on grassroots fundraising, we coordinated, we consulted with Act Blue, who is basically the hub of the progressive small dollar ecosystem.

And we used a 1971 law passed by Congress as a framework, the public campaign finance law.
And we modernized that.  And we came up with a formula for getting on to the debate stage that isn't a layup for anybody, but it's not a full court shot.  It's a viable pathway, but a pathway that requires you to show that you're running a nationwide grassroots campaign.  That's how we won in 2008, and that's how we will win in 2020.
 
And we're working hard at the DNC to make sure that we live up to our duty to be Switzerland, our duty to make sure that we exercise impartiality, and even-handedness—that is the official Charter of the DNC, and I cannot tell you how seriously I take this responsibility.  Whoever wins the nomination will have the full support of our party, and our infrastructure and access to every tool here.  And that process will be the result of a process that was in fact fair to everybody.  That's why we've established new guidelines for the way in which the DNC, our officers, employees engage and interact with candidates.  No DNC officer or staffer will be permitted to endorse a candidate for president during the primary.  And throughout the primary we'll be lifting up all of our candidates voices to show why the choice is clear.  One party is fighting for the American people.  The other party's golfing.  Pretty simple.

Folks, I want to make sure that we continue our momentum.  I want to make sure that everything we do exudes fairness, exudes inclusion.  That's what we've done.  That's why we have been able to score these record victories; everybody's working together.  And if the last two years have taught us anything, it's this. 

Elections matter.

Candidates matter.
 
Issues matter.
 
Organizing matters.

I've said to you more than once.  Someone asked me what do you miss most about your old job.  I miss helping people at scale.  When you've got the right people in the right places good things can happen.  When you got the wrong people in the wrong places, bad things happen. A lot of bad things are happening right now.  Some you're aware of. And frankly, all too many you're unaware of.  Because that's what happens when you control the levers of power, not only here in Washington, but in state houses and local governments across the nation.
 
Donald Trump declared a national emergency earlier this week but you know what, it's just, you know, you know where there's a national emergency?

There's a national emergency of gun violence. 

There's a national emergency in health care.  If you can't afford your insulin.  That's a family emergency, a community emergency and a national emergency. 

We have a national emergency on climate. 

We have a national emergency of voter suppression. 

We have a national emergency for women who work a fair day's wage and don't get a fair day's pay.

Folks, 400 years after the arrival of slavery, we still have a national emergency, where the President of the United States after Charlottesville can't call racism, racism.

We have a national emergency.  Those are the emergencies we should be dealing with. 

America has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the prison population. That's a national emergency.

Too many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That's a national emergency.

Americans are carrying $1.5 trillion of student debt.  That's a national emergency.

And frankly, I really believe we have an acute national emergency when it comes to our values.
 
I don't understand how compassion became a four letter word.

I don't understand how immigrants became a four letter word.

I don't understand how inclusion became a four letter word, how Muslim became a four letter word again.
 
How LGBTQ became a four letter word to this president.
 
This is the national emergency of our moral values.  That's why this is the most important election of our lifetime.  This is a moral reckoning as much as anything.  My faith teaches me, as I said yesterday, that that which we do unto the least of us, we do on to us.

And it's not simply my faith tradition that teaches me, it's every faith tradition, and those who do not come at it from a faith tradition.  It's what we call a universal value.

But it's a universal value that's on the chopping block.  It's why you're sitting here on a Saturday and a Friday and a Thursday.  It's why you have got some people who are in session in their state legislatures, who took time out to come here, to participate at your own expense because our democracy is indeed on fire.  And it continues to be a five-alarm blaze.

And folks, we can put it out.  We can put it out when we recognize again that we must never conflate unity and unanimity.

I'm never asking you to agree with everything that I say, or everything that's in my platform, or the Democratic party platform.  But when we recognize as Speaker Pelosi so deftly does, and so many others as well, Leader Schumer, that what unites us far outweighs what our differences are, and what our differences are as it relates to the Republicans are 100%.

We believe that climate change is real.  We're debating how to deal with it.  They don't believe it's real.  We believe that healthcare is a right for all, and not a privilege for a few.  Thanks to President Obama, thanks to Democrats who fought for Medicare and Medicaid, we got to 90%.

And parenthetically, when we were debating Medicare and Medicaid, do you know a guy named Ronald Reagan?  He put out an album.  And this is what the album said. " Medicare will lead...,"  These are quotes not paraphrases.  "Medicare will lead to socialized medicine."  Second sentence. This is.  "Medicare will lead to socialism in America."  That's what he said.

Folks, we believe in the capitalist system.  We need a moral capitalism that recognizes that shared prosperity is our North Star.  And we are having a discussion, how do we get from 90% to 100%.
That's the discussion we're having, and the discussion the other side is having is how do we make it harder for people with pre existing conditions to get access to healthcare.

Our universal values are our greatest strength.  Our unity of purpose brought us historic success in 2017, in 2018, and it will continue to bring it in 2019 and 2020 as long as we remember we are at our best when we're together.  As long as we remember that we should never be afraid to use the word compassion; we should never be afraid to make sure that we celebrate our immigrant heritage, that we celebrate and organize and build relationships in every single zip code of this country, recognizing that zip code should never determine destiny.  We should always recognize that our teachers are our most precious resource in our communities, and we should lift them up, not tear them down as Matt Bevin has been doing in Kentucky.  That's why he will be a one term governor.  That's why Donald Trump will be a one term president. 

When we work together, call out hate, call for shared prosperity, call for an economy that works for everyone, call for racial justice, call for justice under law.  That's what the Supreme Court says, and there are no footnotes. no exclusions.  Let's do it together, folks.  And that's how we'll get to the mountaintop.  The world needs us not just America.  I'm confident we can lead.

You know this era, and I leave you with this, this era is going to be studied alongside at least four other eras: the Know Nothing movement of the mid-19th century; the moment that brought us the Chinese Exclusion Act in the early 20th century; the movement that brought us the internment of our Japanese-American brothers and sisters; the movement known as the McCarthy era; and this movement of Trump, where the party of Lincoln died, and the party of Trump came to be.
 
And you know what all those four movements before us have in common?

They ended.

They ended because of the single most important word in a democracy. 

We.  We, the people came together and brought that suffragette movement about.  We the people came together and eliminated the original sin of slavery, acknowledging we still have more work to do.  And we see the work everywhere, and that we the people brought us all the progress that we've seen, and the we the people in the last hundred years, as primarily been we the Democrats. Let's do it together my friends.  That's how we win.

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Democratic National Committee
February 14, 2018

DNC Announces Details For The First Two Presidential Primary Debates

NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo to host first debate in June; CNN to host second in July

Last year, DNC Chair Tom Perez announced that his goals for the Democratic presidential primary debates are to (1) give the grassroots a bigger voice than ever before; (2)  showcase our candidates on an array of media platforms; (3) present an opportunity for vigorous discussion about issues, ideas and solutions; and (4) reach as many potential voters as possible.  Perez announced 12 presidential primary debates to be held over the course of the 2020 cycle, with the first two occurring in June and July of 2019.

Today, the DNC is proud to announce NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo as its partner for the first debate and CNN as its partner for the second debate.  To accommodate what is expected to be a historically large primary field, both debates will have the option of occurring over consecutive nights in prime time to make room for as many as twenty candidates, with the lineups for each night determined at random.  This approach will provide each candidate with a fair opportunity to make his or her case to a large, national audience.

This agreement is unprecedented -  no debate has ever aired in prime time on back-to-back nights. Both debates will be streamed online for free.

The DNC also announced the qualification criteria for candidates’ participation in the first two debates - a two-path system that employs both a polling threshold and a grassroots fundraising threshold, and uses the two measures in combination in the event that more than 20 candidates qualify.
 
 
DETAILS ON MEDIA PARTNERS:

• The DNC will partner with NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo to host the first debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary process. The debate will be broadcast simultaneously on all three networks, with real-time Spanish translations on Telemundo, in prime time on back-to-back weeknights in June. The debate will also be streamed for free on NBC News’ digital platforms including NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, NBC News Mobile App, and OTT apps in addition to Telemundo’s digital platforms.

• The July debate will be broadcast on CNN, CNN International, and CNN en Español in prime time on back-to-back weeknights if more than one night is needed. An unauthenticated live stream of the debate will also be available for all users on CNN’s website, mobile apps and connected TVs via CNNgo.

• Both agreements are unprecedented -  no debate has ever aired in prime time on back-to-back nights before.

• Location, venue, moderators, date and time, format and logistics of the first and second debates will be announced at a later date.

 
DETAILS ON THRESHOLD FOR PARTICIPATION:

 

Democratic candidates may qualify for the first and second debate by meeting one of the two following sets of criteria:
 

• Polling Method: Register 1% or more support in three polls (which may be national polls, or polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and/or Nevada) publicly released between January 1, 2019, and 14 days prior to the date of the Organization Debate.  Qualifying polls will be limited to those sponsored by one or more of the following organizations/institutions:Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Des Moines Register, Fox News, Las Vegas Review Journal, Monmouth University, NBC News, New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR), Quinnipiac University, Reuters, University of New Hampshire, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Winthrop University.  Any candidate’s three qualifying polls must be conducted by different organizations, or if by the same organization, must be in different geographical areas.

• Grassroots Fundraising Method. Candidates may qualify for the debate by demonstrating that the campaign has received donations from at least (1) 65,000 unique donors; and (2) a minimum of 200 unique donors per state in at least 20 U.S. states.  To demonstrate that the fundraising threshold has been reached, candidates must provide verifiable evidence, which they may do by authorizing ActBlue and/or NGP VAN to provide that evidence.

• If more than 20 candidates qualify for the debate, the top 20 candidates will be selected using a methodology that gives primacy to candidates meeting both thresholds, followed by the highest polling average, followed by the most unique donors.

Press Contacts:

DNC
Adrienne Watson
Trump War Room Director

NBC News
Richard Hudock
Director of Communications

CNN
Lauren Pratapas
Senior Director, Communications

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Democratic National Committee
February 13, 2019