Blame for Vice President Kamala Harris‘s landslide loss, not to mention losing control of the Senate, has fallen squarely on the current regime. And while pundits and strategists may disagree on the specifics of how those losses came to pass, the 2024 cycle is likely to accelerate the party’s internal power struggle.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison has announced that he won’t run for a second term in office, and Democratic operatives have suggested to the Washington Examiner that the “sheer totality” of the party’s losses could see the “non-Biden wing” of the party stand to benefit.

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The DNC chairman election isn’t expected to take place until January, with the committee expected to officially set a timeline at their mid-December meeting.

Two veteran Democratic strategists told the Washington Examiner that they expect to see DNC chair candidates spend the coming weeks not only working with the 440 DNC members but publicly signaling to voters how they mark a “fundamental shift” away from the Biden years.

“After this election, there’s a sense that leadership and strategy — the party just outright missed the mark in connecting with voters,” one strategist stated. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Well what happens when it does break? You bring people in to fix it. The party can’t help people if we aren’t winning.”

“I think there’s a lot of resentment right now directed at the kind of old guard. Politically, when it comes to messaging and outreach, there needs to be some serious changes,” a second added. “A changing of the guard.”

Two candidates have formally declared bids: former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and current DNC Vice Chairman Ken Martin.

O’Malley, who opposed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary and served as Biden’s Social Security Administration commissioner, was the first candidate to declare his bid, calling himself a “proven operational leader and a turnaround manager.”

Asked by the New York Times why Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump, O’Malley responded that “the American people’s eyes were taken off the ball and by the politics of fear.”

He also declined to criticize Biden for seeking a second term in office, a running narrative among Democrats following Election Day.

“I’m focused on the future. And I’m running for chair of the D.N.C. because I believe I can lead us out of this darkness and into a better future where we do a better job of connecting with the American people around the economic reality,” he explained. “I can’t fix yesterday. I’m not running to fix yesterday or second-guess yesterday.”

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Martin, on the other hand, has been a DNC vice chair for seven years and chaired the Minnesota Democratic Party since 2011.

And while O’Malley said he planned to meet with party members in the coming weeks to earn their endorsements, Martin touted 83 endorsements from DNC members upon his campaign launch.

In his New York Times announcement interview, Martin blamed the 2024 results, partially, on “really strong headwinds blowing” blowing against Democrats from “the very beginning of this election,” and “economic anxiety” that hurt the party in power.

Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Latino outreach specialist Chuck Rocha are also considering bids of their own.

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Emanuel, a former congressman and mayor of Chicago, has courted some controversy while serving as Biden’s ambassador to Japan for antagonizing China and is well known as a ruthless political operator. His potential run, however, has already been opposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who claimed on X that “the DNC needs an organzier who gets people. Not someone who sends fish heads in the mail.”

Rocha might have the strongest progressive ties of the group after serving as Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) Latino whisperer on his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns and working on Sen.-elect Rep. Ruben Gallego’s (D-AZ) winning 2024 campaign in Arizona.

Rocha does come with his fair share of controversy. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to embezzling funds from the United Steelworkers Union for golf outings and tickets to the Stanley Cup.

Whoever ends up victorious from the chairman race will certainly have their hands full. On top of performing an autopsy report on 2024, the DNC will be forced to deal with a burgeoning campaign to rewrite the 2028 primary schedule, all with a dramatically reduced workforce.

The president had altered Democrats’ cycles-old schedule ahead of the 2024 primary in an effort to inject diversity into the primary process. He specifically elevated South Carolina to first in the nation status as a reward for their help in securing Biden’s 2020 nomination. Furthermore, Nevada, Georgia, and Michigan all skipped ahead of New Hampshire, prompting the Granite State to go rogue and hold an un-sanctioned primary ahead of the official committee schedule.

NBC News reported that, with Biden on the outs, multiple groups plan to challenge the current primary schedule ahead of 2028.

Neither the New Hampshire nor South Carolina Democratic parties answered questions about the 2028 schedule, but South Carolina Democratic strategists told the Washington Examiner that the state would “fight to keep its first in the nation status.”