Tension in DNC Chair Race Comes From Outside - Not Inside - The Party

NBC News:

BALTIMORE - A largely unspoken truth about the race to be the Democratic National Committee's next chairman is that the major candidates agree on almost all the issues -at least the ones relevant to the job they're pursuing.

After all, the job of DNC chair is operational, not ideological. And while everything from Israel policy to the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal have sparked debates in this race, the prescriptions the candidates have offered for actually running the machinery of the Democratic Party are largely interchangeable.

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Instead, most of the tension in the race is coming from Democrats and progressives outside the candidate field and DNC party membership, whoview the contest as another proxy fight between Bernie Sanders and the so-called Democratic establishment, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

This contrast was evident here on Saturday as the candidates gathered to participate in yet another forum ahead of the upcoming February 25 vote in Atlanta: As the candidates stressed unity from the stage — "Everybody else is awesome. We're going to hang together after this," Ellison said of his rivals - their supporters in the audience did not.