Ellison Comments Highlight Divided DNC

The DNC cannot get its act together. DNC Chairman Tom Perez and Vice Chairman Keith Ellison have been working at the DNC for only a few months, yet already they’re divided over one of the biggest issues facing the Democratic Party. The top two DNC officials cannot agree over whether the Democratic Party should be for a single payer health care system.

Chairman Perez has long avoided committing the national party to supporting single payer. During the disastrous Democratic unity tour, Perez awkwardly avoided questions about the issue:

“Hayes then turned to Perez with a question on single payer health care, or ‘Medicare-for-all.’ Did the new DNC chair, now twisting in his seat inches from one of the policy’s most high-profile proponents, support it? ‘Well, you know, we want to make sure that health care is a right,’ Perez began, never quite offering a coherent answer.”

Perez’s non-answers hasn’t stopped his Vice Chairman from avidly stumping for a government takeover of 1/6th of the economy:

“’We can fight fiercely to protect the Affordable Care Act and also look a little bit farther in terms of establishing Medicare for All,’ Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a high-profile single-payer advocate and vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said at the press conference.”

Perez’s chairmanship of the DNC has been filled with bumbling disaster after bumbling disaster. Now he can’t even get his own Vice Chairman to avoid voicing their own disagreements. At least this embarrassment of Perez’s was G-rated.