Whee! Purity spirals can make you dizzy. Yesterday, Politico ran a curious story headlined, “Teachers union president Randi Weingarten resigns from DNC.” The sub-headline, dripping with venom, added, “‘I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging,’ she wrote in a letter to DNC Chair Ken Martin.”
Ouch! Weingarten has been a DNC member for 23 years. In her June 5th rage-quitting letter, the once-untouchable union queenpin huffed, “I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more of our communities.” A noble sentiment—just 18 months and one presidential election too late.
“Weingarten’s departure,” Politico explained, “is the latest sign that the party is still embroiled in factional disputes, and it is likely to only further finger-pointing and intensify criticism among Democrats.” According to Politico, the straw that broke Randi’s back was the recent ouster of DNC Vice-Chair David Hogg for wrongthink.
The natives are restless. The story reported that union members applauded after Randi told them about her withdrawal. In a related New York Times story, readers learned that Randi wasn’t the only one. Lee Saunders, president of the blue blockbuster American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), also jumped ship.
It was political infighting at its best, or worst. We learned that, after Randi supported a different candidate for DNC chair, incoming David Martin stripped Randi of a prestigious committee appointment on the DNC’s influential Rules Committee— a post in which she’d squatted since 2009.
It’s also inconvenient timing. “The infighting among Democrats comes,” Politico drolly noted, “as they are trying to rebuild their party in the wake of their 2024 loss.” The Times was more severe. “The departures of Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Saunders,” the Times reporter wrote, “represent a significant erosion of trust in the D.N.C. during a moment in which Democrats are still locked out of power and grappling for a message and messenger to lead the opposition to President Trump.”
Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders weren’t just random DNC bureaucrats— they are the connective tissue between the party’s elite class and its industrial-strength foot soldiers. Their untimely departures signal something deeper than personal pique: a rupture in labor’s decades-long marriage to Democratic leadership.
If rank-and-file union members start feeling unrepresented or disrespected, mid-term turnout will drop. So will funding. So will door-knockers in the Rust Belt. The Democrats may soon realize they risk alienating the most reliable muscle in their vaunted ground game.
Weingarten’s complaint about the party failing to “enlarge the tent” wasn’t just sour grapes— it was a screeching crone in a coal mine. Her ouster (and Hogg’s before hers) suggests the DNC is full-on into the purity spiral phase, purging heterodoxy for ideologically rigid leadership. That might thrill the activist wing, but it’s a gift to President Trump, who only needs a divided opposition and lukewarm turnout from moderates to steamroll through 2026 and beyond.
The deepest irony is that, while corporate media keeps trying to paint President Trump as unhinged and chaotic, it’s actually the DNC that’s bleeding leaders, devouring its own, and leaking credibility. Voters don’t need to read the tea leaves— this is open war inside the Democrats’ shrinking tent. And, to everyone except sold-out partisans, party infighting reads like incompetence.
When even dyed-in-the-wool union bosses are calling it quits, Trump gets an easy contrast: I’m the one running the show. They can’t even run a meeting.
Ironically, the normally loquacious DNC Chair David Martin declined to comment for either important story. His sudden silence felt less like strategy and more like survival— an uneasy pause from a man sensing the ideological earth shifting beneath his feet. In a party spinning through communist-style purity spirals and performative purges, Martin seems unsure which words might trigger the next inquisition. The neutral zone is shrinking fast.
As the purity spiral tightens like a noose, this is the worst possible moment for a Democrat with ambition to step into the spotlight. It’s not a leadership race—it’s the Hunger Games Volume I. The wise scatter into the underbrush while the naive charge for the Cornucopia and get politically disemboweled.
I can’t wait to read the next book.
There was a time when dems used to attack Republicans because a Republican nominee was not Jesus Christ-like enough.
They saw that purity was a flaw back then.
Now they eat their own as if it is an art.
Dems are shrinking before our eyes.
They once represented views held by ~50% of the public, but now, they are on the 10% to 20% side of every issue.
Dems’ purity-test is killing them.
Why do we even have government employee unions?
Their employers are negotiating with employees who have the power to fire them with their votes. The incentive to give union members oversized benefits in exchange for votes is too strong, too much like bribery.
Government employee unions have too much political influence, they should be banned.