If Democrats Want To Save The Party, They Need A New DNC

A lot will depend on the new direction the Democratic National Committee takes, regardless of leadership.

By Michael Salzillo, The Political Pulse of America

Very few people today will have much praise for the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) work in recent times. On the one hand, it is very easy for a progressive to villainize the DNC as an institution that favors the elite and tilts the scale. After all, 8 years ago, WikiLeaks and superdelegates proved that the 2016 contest was tilted heavily towards one unpopular establishment-favored candidate (Hillary Clinton), and against an anti-establishment insurgent (Bernie Sanders).

But progressives should value the importance of a DNC that is run right, even beyond policy. Let’s take some steps back.

At the time, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign had seemed a godsend in inspiring the Democratic base around a message of change. Yet it also had some less appealing and long-lasting ramifications up to this day. As people began to realize especially post-2016, the Obama campaign apparatus’s successes in 2008 led to a disastrous strategic mistake. That is, it led the Obama campaign’s work to largely supersede and even replace that of the DNC itself.

jamie harrison talks in front of a small crowd

As we clearly see now, that had some terrible consequences for the DNC. After the 2010 shellacking, and then the 2014 drubbings, the DNC cut back its ground game outside of the battleground states. If you remember, Obama’s 2012 campaign was a campaign more centered around the swing states of that cycle than anything else (remember? Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, etc.). Furthermore, the prioritization of the Obama Only machine siphoned off financial resources from the DNC, which by 2016 faced a plague of financial problems.

(And that is not to discount the abysmal conduct that defined the leadership of then-DNC Chairwoman and practical Clinton surrogate/fixer Debbie Wasserman-Schultz).

2016 and 2024 are emblematic of the costs in letting the DNC run dry. Neglecting the basics, rejecting the ambitions and potential of such an institution, and taking it for granted outside of satisfying the whims of the establishment elite and the donor and consultant classes.