‘I Am Nam­ing Names’: DNC Chair Says He’s Going Scorched Earth On Par­ty When Term Ends, Defends Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics

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‘I Am Naming Names’: DNC Chair Says He’s Going Scorched Earth On Party When Term Ends, Defends Identity Politics

Out­go­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee (DNC) Chair Jaime Har­ri­son defend­ed the use of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics in his party’s approach Thurs­day, push­ing back against crit­ics who argue Democ­rats should aban­don race-based strate­gies.

Har­ri­son, whose term ends Feb. 1, cit­ed his expe­ri­ence as a black man while argu­ing in an Ari­zona DNC speech that minori­ties must see the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty as their own and “can­not be the excuse for why we win or lose,” accord­ing to The Asso­ci­at­ed Press (AP).

“When I wake up in the morn­ing, when I look in the mir­ror, when I step out the door, I can’t rub this off,” he said, ges­tur­ing to his face. “This is who I am. This is how the world per­ceives me.”

“That is my iden­ti­ty,” Har­ri­son con­tin­ued. “And it is not pol­i­tics. It is my life. And the peo­ple that I need in the par­ty, that I need to stand up for me, have to rec­og­nize that. You can­not run away from that.” (RELATED:Democrats Set To Elect New Leader Fol­low­ing Trump’s Inau­gu­ra­tion)

The chair­man sug­gest­ed he has unre­solved inter­nal par­ty griev­ances, hint­ing that “the muz­zle comes off” after his replace­ment is elect­ed. He announced he has no plans to endorse his suc­ces­sor and is writ­ing a book to detail his expe­ri­ences dur­ing his four-year tenure, the out­let report­ed.

“That’s it for you all,” Har­ri­son said as he con­clud­ed his speech. “Because I’m sav­ing the rest for my book. And I am nam­ing names.”

The speech comes amid ongo­ing dis­cus­sions about the effi­ca­cy of racial pol­i­tics in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s elec­toral strat­e­gy fol­low­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris‘s Nov. 5 loss to Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump.

Har­ri­son, elect­ed DNC chair in Jan­u­ary 2021 with Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s endorse­ment, pre­vi­ous­ly served as the first African Amer­i­can chair of the South Car­oli­na Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

He unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran for U.S. Sen­ate in 2020, los­ing to incum­bent Repub­li­can South Car­oli­na Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham by 11% despite rais­ing record cam­paign funds.