Life of the Party
Old fault lines reemerge in the race for DNC chair, but the deeper division among Democrats seems to lie in the purpose of the party itself.
Even without Donald Trump’s shocking electoral victory or the Republicans’ sweep of down-ballot races back in November, Democrats were headed for war after a long and divisive primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. While Clinton won the nomination by a strong majority in delegates and raw votes, Sanders supporters routinely attacked the process by which Clinton had been nominated; some even felt — and later leaks appeared to confirm — that the DNC showed preferential treatment toward the Clinton campaign (despite claiming neutrality) and sought to undermine Bernie Sanders with negative media stories.
The July convention tried to paper over some of the hostility between Clinton and Sanders supporters with a few symbolic gestures — for instance, Sanders formally nominated Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president during roll call — but new revelations about the primary debates, changes to the superdelegate system, and the Clinton campaign’s press relationships would quickly undo whatever unity may have been forged in the weeks following the convention, when Clinton’s poll numbers were strongest.
Trump’s victory only accelerated the timetable in which Democrats needed to have difficult conversations about the party’s inability to attract and mobilize voters, especially as the electorate becomes more diverse and more liberal on key issues. Trump’s win was by no means a mandate, and I sympathize with Democrats who feel the need to defend Clinton against bad, knee-jerk reactions to her loss. But Democrats had been getting blown out in state and local elections long before 2016; and they had failed to capture the hope and deliver on the change they had promised in 2008 long before it became apparent that 2016 would be a referendum on the political establishment.
Thus, rather than re-litigate who would’ve been the better opponent to Trump in last year’s election, Democrats should work to understand how they failed to produce a candidate that could unite the various coalitions that make up the party’s base. They must also reckon with the reality that Trump won in large part because people who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 broke for Trump in November. In other words, no one candidate or policy position or election strategy fully accounts for why Democrats have failed to compete with Republicans up and down the ballot. This suggests there is a fundamental problem with the party itself as an organizing structure.
I believe that throughout the Democratic primary, two very distinct visions of the Democratic party, and political parties in general, began to take shape, ultimately becoming the basis for opposition to Clinton or Sanders as the Democratic nominee depending on which “camp” one was in. These two visions continue to shape the current DNC chair race (primarily) between Sanders-backed candidate Keith Ellison and current Secretary of Labor Tom Perez.
One vision sees the Democratic Party as a space for elevating those who are loyal to the party’s brand. The people who dictate the party’s agenda, acquire leadership posts, and gain the financial and political support for elections are those who invest the most in the party for the longest amount of time. In this view, hierarchies within the party are understood to be a function of the party’s stability — and a source of wisdom. Former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz makes this clear in her description of superdelegates:
The alternate vision of the Democratic Party sees the party not as a club but as a conduit for elevating grassroots movements to the national stage. In this view, the party’s brand is largely perfunctory — a necessary evil in a electoral system that fails to accommodate more than two political parties. Leadership posts are awarded based on one’s commitment to certain principles and not so much one’s legacy or length of time in the party. In other words, what you stand for matters far more than whether or not you identify as a Democrat.
In his post-election op-ed piece in the New York Times, Bernie Sanders articulates this vision of the Democratic Party precisely:
I believe strongly that the party must break loose from its corporate establishment ties and, once again, become a grass-roots party of working people, the elderly and the poor. We must open the doors of the party to welcome in the idealism and energy of young people and all Americans who are fighting for economic, social, racial, and environmental justice. We must have the courage to take on the greed and power of Wall Street, the drug companies, the insurance companies and the fossil fuel industry.
I see limitations in both visions of the party, but neither is necessarily wrong (or more wrong than the other). The first vision, a more traditional view of political parties, is very inward-looking and bullish about change, while the alternative seems largely indifferent to the stability that continuity in leadership provides political parties, even when those parties are out of power. Regardless, neither vision as articulated by Schultz or Sanders fully grapples with the Democrats’ reliance on interest groups rather than a particular ideology to define their base of support — and that does not bode well for long-term unity. Whereas Republicans tend to coalesce around a common set of ideas considered “conservative”, only parts of the Democratic Party coalition can be defined as “liberal”.
In fact, I would argue that the perennial debate over the left’s prioritization of “identities” over economic populism is partly based in the interest groups-ideology divide. The Sanders campaign, for instance, found some success in rejecting the New Democrats’ anti-ideological triangulation, making explicit demands for single-payer healthcare, free college tuition, and a living wage. Nevertheless, some have argued that crafting appeals to white working class voters on the basis of opposition to wealthy elites papers over the different interests of white and minority voters. Thus “Sandersism” runs the risk of racial triangulation — minimizing explicit racial appeals to minority voters as well as criticisms of white privilege, implicit bias, and structural racism in order to win over white working class voters.
Ellison and Perez are both credible candidates for DNC chair, but their candidacies will continue to be defined by the terms of last year’s Democratic primary. A Perez victory will be met with deep skepticism — if not hostility — from Sanders supporters. Regardless of his plans for the future of the party, he will signal more of the same. Ellison, in contrast, will be seen as a triumph for the progressive wing of the party, a signal that Democratic leaders are willing to give Sandersism a try. But Ellison would likely engender anger among Clinton supporters who see Sanders, an independent who refuses to join the Democratic Party, as having too much influence in the party’s direction. Still, I think Democrats’ best hope for some semblance of unity in the age of Trump lies in how they oppose him and the GOP legislature’s oncoming attacks on labor, healthcare, reproductive rights, and undocumented immigrants. Differing visions of the party would continue to compete, but they would not likely be as dominating a force in 2020 as they were in 2016.
