Yves here. This Tom Neuburger post finesses the question of “What is the Democratic Party?” and for good reason. Lambert gave the matter a fair bit of study and could not come up with much of an answer. We asked political scientist Tom Ferguson the same question and he agreed it was not obvious. So the fallback is to consider what being a Democrat amount to, and it appears to be “cannon fodder”.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
Image: Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call file photo
Why do national Democrats seem so feckless when it comes to elections? Look no further than the consultant-ridden DNC, the Democratic National Committee, nominally the governing institution of the Democratic Party.
James Zogby is a long-time member of the DNC, and has long railed against its practices. Consider what he has to say in the following interview with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti on a recent Breaking Points show.
The whole interview is good, but here are a few juicy quotes for those with less than a little listening time.
On Democratic Party “membership” (lightly edited; all emphasis mine):
I grew up, my mom was a precinct captain and I used to go door to door with her, and go to Ward meetings, and on Election Day we’d get poll cards and we’d go to the polls and pass them out. You belonged to something, and you felt like this was part of who you were.
That’s no longer the case. Being a member of the Democratic Party means nothing more than: I’m on a email list, I’m on a text message list, I’m on a hard mail list, I’m on a phone list, and I get asked for money. Nobody asks my opinion. There is no way to record your feeling about an issue.
On whether the DNC controls the Party:
In all the years I’ve been on the DNC, first time we had an actual election was when Keith Ellison and Tom Perez faced off after the Bernie-Hillary race.
First time we had a floor vote and a debate on an issue was at that same meeting when we debated whether we should accept money from PACs that emanated from businesses that violated the DNC positions on oil, fracking, whatever.
The fact is that DNC members even were like props who go to meetings and fill chairs and, I can say it because I’m a Catholic, you know we know when to stand up, when to sit down, when to clap, when to leave. Votes are a done deal. Staff decide what we vote on.
On who controls the money:
[E]very year, every cycle, the DNC spends hundreds of millions of dollars — this year well over a billion — and guess what? I have no idea where it’s going to go.
The Harris campaign raised a billion dollars. It’s in the red. We will never know where that money got spent. We will never evaluate was it effective or not.
People give $3 donations monthly [and] we have no idea where that money goes. And as opposed to being a governing body, like I said, we [the DNC] are props at meetings.
The fact is, Democratic voters aren’t members of the Party in any sense of membership. You can’t be a card-carrying Democrat. There are no cards, and the national party itself is just a tiny group of people with enormous power. Democratic voters are just supporters, sideline cheering fans at a game they can only watch. Or more accurately, Democratic voters the Party’s target market, one source of its funds.
Is the same true on the Republican side? Of course it is. But unlike Democrats, Republican fear their base…
…while Democrats ridicule theirs…
By “socialist” Biden means these people like these, marginal, easily ignored:
We all want the U.S. to march into a better future. The Democratic Party is having trouble convincing voters it should lead that mission. This is why.
The Democratic Party is not actually a party, it has no members. One might register as a Democrat in various states, and one can say one is a card carrying member, but that is purposely deceptive. It is a private corporation.
One of the best analyses of what the Democratic Party really is:
https://abeautifulresistance.org/site/2018/01/11/the-democratic-party-is-not-what-you-think
If the DNC is not making the actual decisions of the Party re: where the money goes, who is?
Don’t give a facile answer of “donors” because, duh. I mean, who are the ones actually pushing the levers?
Quick answer. The greatest amount of push, and shove, comes from the zionists. And yes sir, of course, from Israel. My senator, a zionist, a genocidist, Fetterman, waves a blue and white Israeli flag like it’s a thousand dollar bill, not an ounce of regret or reflection on his insipid, hooded face. Not long ago, in Water Cooler, a short video surfaced of the halls of congress, where it seemed that the walls had been papered over with the obligatory blue and white signs saying, We stand with Israel. That’s your answer. Who stands with the people of the Mon and Ohio valleys? The ghosts of democrats past.
Great, all I have to do is find a DNC org chart and look for “Zionists.” /s
Just assume they’re all zionists. That has to be the controlling interest of the DNC. Bibi calls the shots, but it’s unlikely he’ll be located on the chart. Look real hard, though, and you might find him somewhere between the lines. After Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, etc. just this year, after the genocide, all the war crimes, all the horror, the only solution is to extinguish the First Amendment and arrest all opposition to the zionist entity as being anti-semetic? And dem congressional reps, beholden to the DNC for their positions, overwhelmingly go along with this? Tell me, who’s pushing the levers?
Aleister Crowley….
“Do what thou wilt: …. “
To me (a Naked Capitalism reader) it appears that ‘grifters’ have taken over the party and are working personal agendas at the expense of the public/party good.
One faction being in charge of a major party is normal. What is not normal is that the neoliberal faction has never had to surrender control of the DNC despite losing presidential elections in 2000, 2004, 2016 and 2024 while massively underperforming downticket. Turn of the century demographics favored Democrats hugely yet neoliberals could only muster razor thin margins. There has been zero accountability for their electoral failures. Decisions are made but no one ever looks you in the eye to stand behind those decisions. Nothing they do is coherently explained in real time, if pressed after the fact they go into CYA mode.
The DNC is not a real political party. It’s that electronics store that got busted out in season two of The Sopranos. Lobbyists have gone from having access to being in charge and everyone else is just in it for themselves and to hell with the country’s best interests.
Which is the long way of saying that no one’s in charge, “DNC leadership” is an oxymoron.
>The DNC is not a real political party. It’s that electronics store that got busted out in season two of The Sopranos. Lobbyists have gone from having access to being in charge and everyone else is just in it for themselves and to hell with the country’s best interests.
Love the Sopranos reference. I think most modern politics now can best be described as a gangster operation. Everyone getting their cut, committees getting their funds from members, as you say lobbyists/big time donors getting their say on proposed legislation. No one does anything except pay lip service to the people they claim to represent. And it’s totally bipartisan by the way.
The latest from Unusual Whales and congressional portfolios:
https://unusualwhales.com/images/report/uwfs.webp
I don’t think you know what the DNC is. (Did you read the post?) It is the Democratic National Committee, not the party. In theory, it is the steering committee of the party,, it does not claim to be the party itself. My question is if the steering committee is not steering who is?
The thing I most miss about the Bernie movement was there were online leftists who were concerned with wielding real power and asked and answered questions like this, rather than just talking in generalities and fake savviness.
Tony lays it out succinctly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPPFvcdcjA8
And David Chase foreshadowed it in the series pilot episode: America is a racket.
Maybe the Democrats are how Obama once described himself when he said-
‘I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.’
To the insiders it is a money laundromat where they get untold wealth from. To some it is the party that will save them from the bad orange man. To older members, it is the vibrant party that they remember from their youth. To progressives it is the party where they take their dreams to be fulfilled and not the party where progressives go to die. In other words, it is what you want it to be. But that is one Schrödinger’s box that none of them will really want to open.
In other words, the DNC is a cult and a money-laundering operation, tho perhaps I repeat myself. ;)
The amazing thing is, as Lambert occasionally points out, $1 billion is not a big number anymore. We can all think of several individuals who would happily spend $1 billion if it gave them direct influence over American politics.
But they don’t spend their $1 billion, because the Democrats don’t do anything effective with it. They just divide it up amongst their little cabal.
To generalize:
The D so-called leadership only cares about money. Raising money to pay themselves is the goal.
The R so-called leadership only cares about power. Enacting their agenda(s), even when not in the majority, is the goal.
Interesting. I read the exact opposite on MAGA sites.
In many democracies, people don’t belong to a political party and change their party support from election to election. The only countries where 30% of the population belongs to a particular party are communist countries or the U.S. And that is the reason for the undemocratic nature of the U.S.
The vast majority of communist countries do/did not have party membership anywhere near 30%. There were only outliers like Albania
It seems that both national committees function merely as clearing houses in which policy preferences are apportioned in proportion to the funding provided by the relevant donors/lobbies. The task of the committee staff is then to: (i) package the policies in accordance with the pre-determined apportionment (inevitably on a lowest common denominator basis); (ii) notify the candidates and loyal journalists about how they are to sell the package, and co-ordinate with them to keep them on-message; and (iii) disburse the campaign funds in accordance with the inputs provided by the consultant psephologists (which entails squaring the psephological inputs with the package, again usually on a lowest common denominator basis).
Of course the application of systematic business methodologies to campaign finance has been going on since at least Mark Hanna (for William McKinley), but the process has been refined to an almost extreme degree, especially since Citizens United. As such, the political economy of the US is now analogous with ultra-processed food, which is devoid of nutrients, in which the process is almost elevated above the content, but which is ultimately carcinogenic.
Great analogy UPP ultra processed politics
You have it. One question — how do you mean “lowest common denominator?”
The narrow margin of political wins and congressional control has always seemed to me to be a managed outcome.
Given the description provided, amplified by the comments above, is there any real hope of reform of such a rotten organization? No. Such an organization would resist and counter any attempt to extirpate such corruption: Sanders’ fate proves the futility. The DNC also has no distinct platform beyond opposition to Trump, on who it is thus dependent. The future of most Americans lies elsewhere.
The Democrats are the pawl in the Uniparty ratchet which ensures that legislation only ever changes in the direction inimical to the wellbeing of working Americans.
Hello
If the Democratic party isn’t really a party, how come it is so difficult to replace with a real progressive party.
It was possible a hundred years ago (The Progressive Party) why can it not be done again??
A hundred years ago the Progressive Party could get on the ballot. The laws have changed. Now third parties are only allowed to the degree that they demonstrate their futility.
The above answers your question
“But unlike Democrats, Republican fear their base”
The Democratic Party in its current form exists because of a carefully guarded two party system. All the vast borg of propaganda–the cable shows, the “national newspapers,” the Demo bloggers–function to maintain a system where only two choices exist and he agonist/antagonist fantasy can be kept alive. The Dems are a machine for maintaining our corrupt oligarchic status quo. Nothing could be more perfectly obvious. Two wings of the same bird of prey.
And our politics in aspic also explains the geriatric politicians and donors and often journalists. The country is a slave to its ruling class who are clinging to power with their finger nails. Feet first is the only way they ever intend to leave….
Nice.
We can always hope those nails are old, brittle, and weak.
Why is it so difficult today to have a progressive party? We have a progressive party it’s called the Green Party and guess what? Progressives (who are actually pwogwessives as the late Alex Cockburn used to called them) don’t really care and are almost all posers (including my children, btw) and actually support whatever maintains the status-quo economically and “champions” identity politics out of misplaced “compassion” for sexual and racial minorities as long as they, the PMC’s, are doing well-economically. They have, in my experience, nothing but contempt for lower-class working class citizens because they are to be brutally frank, better people, i.e., economically successful.
Thomas Frank got the hang of it all in his book Listen Liberal.
What is the Democratic Party?
The exact details elude me but didn’t Jill Stein sue the DNC when they rigged the nomination process and the courts ruled that it was a private corporation and could do basically what it wanted with respect to selecting their nominee. So, I think it’s been adjudicated. It’s a corporation owned by major donors.
>Pornhub pulls out of Florida, VPN demand ‘surges 1150%’
Here is the answer to yesterday’s link on What Has Happened to Our Grand Experiment, the Internet? Along with the shrill back and forth on TweeterX between Alex Jones, Stew Peters, and David Icke who are taking swipes at each other, the internet as a “social media platform” seems to be entering a new and not so good phase. Even Substack is polluted. I didn’t need to see a women giving fellatio to a man on the NY subways while people just walked by early this morning.
On the work/productivity side of things. I work from home and that’s good, especially with this weather. It seems like as in most new technologies, it expands human consciousness for ends that are both positive and negative.
I’m not sure this comment landed quite where you intended, though perhaps Pornhub and the DNC do have rather a lot in common (aside from the “pulls out” part, which the DNC will never do).
This sounds like “that damn DNC.” But all the democratic voters voted for Biden during the primaries when they were given no real opponents. All they had to do to send a message was not vote for Biden. That was an easy ask. They didn’t have to decide to vote for someone else, just not vote for Biden. They voted for the only option they were given who was a man who was obviously not qualified to be President.
The father of the DNC could well be W.C.Fields who brilliantly and insidiously defined and shaped the party under a single iron rule: “Never give a sucker an even break.” He assumed the role of comedian to hide the truth in plain sight.
“Suckers” in this case being those who believe government should be, Of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The story of the modern Democratic Party is told by a book published some time ago by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson called Winner-Take-All Politics which place the “sea change” when the DNC elected to focus on corporate money in 1978.
I personally do not blame the DNC for anything they reflect the attitudes of those who votef for Democrats who believe they are better morally (and financially though they don’t like saying that part) or are member of favored minorities who push the sexual and racial minority angle who manage to favor the corporate elites (but don’t say so) and love the American Empire and its endless wars. The Republicans call the Democratic Party a left-wing party and socilist/communist in intent. This provides a kind of fantastical quality to American politics and has, in my view, killed democracy. Again this is not the fault of either political party but, rather, and indication that both parties promote an aggressive and willful ignorance of reality increasingly shared by other parts of the Empire. I have never seen our culture so dominated by anti-intellectualism on all sides that allows for the direct rule of oligarchs. We, as a political culture, are no longer a democratic republic with a Constitution but a new kind of Imperial government ruled not by an Emperor but a network of oligarchs increasingly augmented by AI. “The people” don’t want to be citizens but prefer being being subjects because they don’t care to take the trouble to take responsibiity for their society being only focused on consumerism and radical materialism as a national religion we all bend the knew to.
It occurs to me that you might be thinking of particular subsets of Americans. I believe that most Americans are too busy working 2-3 jobs and trying to keep their heads just above the waterline and don’t have the time or mental energy to devote to being a well informed citizen. Of those that do, who are they to turn to to get any truth or enlightenment on these subjects? Almost any outlet they might reach for to learn about our problems is spewing imperial propaganda 24/7, so unless they luck upon NC or a select few other venues, how are they to learn?
Why is it so difficult today to have a progressive party? We have a progressive party it’s called the Green Party and guess what? Progressives (who are actually pwogwessives as the late Alex Cockburn used to called them) don’t really care and are almost all posers (including my children, btw) and actually support whatever maintains the status-quo economically and “champions” identity politics out of misplaced “compassion” for sexual and racial minorities as long as they, the PMC’s, are doing well-economically. They have, in my experience, nothing but contempt for lower-class working class citizens because they are to be brutally frank, better people, i.e., economically successful.
Thomas Frank got the hang of it all in his book Listen Liberal.
RE: “There is no way to record your feeling about an issue.”
Au contraire! I will never forget going to the fall county fair in 2016 and seeing both the Republican and Democrat booths set up there. The Republican booth had people talking with voters, a life sized cardboard cutout of Trump which people could have pictures taken with, and they were handing out all kinds of Trump swag. Looked like fun, if Trump is your cup of tea.
The Democrats on the other hand had an unorganized table with no people behind it, but they had left a white poster board with the issues of the day listed on the left hand side and a bunch of colored sticker dots. If you were able to find the directions, you were asked to place a dot next to the issue most important to you. That was it. No contact with the party, and not much fun either. But feelings were recorded! Whether the stickers stayed attached to the poster, and whether anybody from the party ever actually looked at them and passed on the info is another story. My guess would be the poster board was dutifully recycled by the liberal goodthinkers as soon as the fair was over.
My experience exactly. The Republicans are friendly in a Rotary Club outreach way; the Dems look for reasons to exclude people with unacceptable views. In 20 years I’ve gone from actively working as a Democratic Club co-founder in a red district, signing up 1800 Dem voters in 2004 to now actively hating the Democrat party and the scum who run it. I utterly refuse to vote for ANY Democrat on ANY ticket. My very last effort was to caucus for Bernie in 2016 and watch the DNC scum sabotage his winning candidacy in favor of their corrupt utterly unpopular candidate. We should have had President Sanders and thanks to the DNC we got a game show host. The Democrat Party can go to hell.
divadab, my experience with Dems has some parallels with yours. i was 12 when JFK was assassinated. School let out early, many of us went to the nearest catholic church to light candles. Later when RFK showed support to the farmworkers it cemented my view of them as being on our side. It seemed like every home in east los angeles had a picture of either or both Kennedy’s.
in my early 20’s I had a union job, the CWA (which we called Company Wins Again) was in thrall to the Dems, thus began my disillusionment. Where I see a parallel is after years of contempt for both and voting third party (or not at all) I supported Sanders in 2016, had the pleasure of meeting his wife Jane doing security at Alcatraz when she came in his stead to show support for Natives.
My disgust and abhorrence at them is exactly what you describe. they can go to hell.
I don’t know who a workaday Democrat thinks they are anymore, I tend to think of them as pampered brunch eaters who do their very best to ignore the ugliness (homelessness, corruption, misery) in their midst, but I do know that anyone with a net worth of less than ten million who gives money to any Democrat running for office or the Democrat Party as a whole is a chump who has money to burn. They also don’t tend to realize that people with Democrat bumper stickers on their cars get snickered at behind their backs. And, no, not a Trump / Republican fan here either.
Frustrating to read this and to watch the video. I tell people all the time that inside the party it is so much worse than I ever imagined. Here in Kentucky, the party doesn’t even want to have the discussion – I get cut off routinely during State Central meetings.
The things I have been proposing are a return to investment in the rural districts (1,2,4&5) which have been investment free for 2 and 3 decades. No D is viable in these districts because the party is not viable, having focused on the Golden Triangle of Louisville, Lexington & Frankfort for so long. And of course, a return to being unequivocally pro labor.
Some of the county parties are getting the message – help is not on the way. I am hearing about larger counties wanting to start PACs so they can fund themselves. They get it that contributions to the Ky D Party will go to other priorities, like advancing the Presidential ambitions of Governor Andy Beshear – at a recent county meeting I was told that a KDP insider had said 70% of the budget would be used in this way. Andy is a very competent executive, especially in a public crisis like fires, floods, winter storms. But he has used the KDP as an extension of his own campaigns; in the last election the party endorsed and supported only 8 State House candidates, all but one lost. One of the requirements of their support was use of the Governor’s political consultants, got to keep those consultants fed…
The irony is that there is so much upside possible here – R support is broad but not deep. And the person who would benefit most from a rebuild of the party at the grassroots level is Governor Beshear. So far, he and his team are less than enthusiastic – they are continuing “Rural Listening Tours” this year. I attended one in Henderson where KDP leadership began the 2 hour meeting by talking for 40 minutes. They had 4 pre selected topics, no deviation was tolerated. A local raised his hand and said something they didn’t want to hear so they shut him down, he muttered something about “What a bunch of BS…” which led to a scolding by the KDP chair. This is no way to rebuild a party.
I say all this as a 4x D nominee for Congress in KY-02, a deep R district, I am in no danger of getting elected. TBF, Beshear didn’t carry this district or the 1st, not sure about 4 and 5 but I suspect they were the same.
Best…H
The 4 pre-selected topics thing sounds like the only species of opinion solicitation I see from any political organization in this country, including the Democrats. You get a fake “survey” asking for your opinion on the 3-5 subjects they think are important, which you are also supposed to agree with, and your choices are to agree (“defend democratic societies”) or show that you’re one of the bad guys (“allow evil Putin to take over the world”). It’s a joke. When the Ukraine dust-up was getting underway, I sent Elizabeth Warren a long screed saying “keep us out of this mess, it has no bearing on any genuine American interests” and I got a form letter back saying “I will be standing strong behind the brave democratic people of Ukraine against Russian aggression” (so basically the exact opposite of what I was saying). They don’t want your opinion. They just want confirmation of their own rhetorical positions. And your money.
The KDP sounds as if it has been “right-sized.” Similar to Obama’s abandonment of the fifty-state strategy in his first term.
One suspects that, not only do the consultants require feeding, they are one of the ways the process is controlled, as I guess you saw at the “Rural Listening” meeting. They’re filtering rural public opinion for anything they can use as a tool, but not the way, say, a Tammany captain would show up at a fire to give people money, clothing, and a place to stay in return for their political support — benefits all flow only one way.
Living in conservative rural Oregon, I have seen what you see; Republican support is broad but not deep.
The ONLY time the Democratic Party was a mass party was during the FDR period. Before that, it was the home of urban Tammany Halls of various sizes, coupled with some racist elements in the South, and silver enthusiasts amongst the farmers (cross of gold, anyone?). The bulk of supporters were non-posh Anglo-Saxons in the Appalachians, poor farmers (albeit not all of them) and those who saw an opportunist party willing to take any color coat to win. In the 30s, it became a party for immigrants and poor workers, but only to control the growth of the Left amongst the rabble.
So, why are we lamenting the despicable behavior of such a formation, when it has had no time for any principle outside protecting property (including slaves) and keeping order while spying on, sabotaging, and killing the Left? Even conservatives only lament this demise because they need a foil to look good.
Some really good comments in this thread. I found this from Bryan exceedingly helpful:
https://abeautifulresistance.org/site/2018/01/11/the-democratic-party-is-not-what-you-think
Must read IMO.
Thomas
Know nothing about DNC, and little of RNC, but in the case of RNC you have 56×3 “members” elected in their states/territories. But of the nominal members I can’t see more than handful having actual power, by which I take to mean can control the Executive Board. Keep in mind there are also national party Senate and House committees that control money. I don’t know what the power relationship is between the party and these committees.
As far as being organized as a legal “private corporation”. I see this commented a lot but I don’t see why that is supposed to be significant?
For the RNC, the membership is divided into “regions” and for the average member I get the impression there’s more involvement at the regional level.
Our state RNC committeeman/woman are elected at state party convention in Pres election years for four-year terms which commence at the close of the national convention. Our state chairman is elected to two-year term at the odd year state convention. State convention is made up of delegates elected by state legislative district with numbers based on district R votes in the previous Presidential election. You have sign a state party membership (no cost) to be eligible to vote/run for delegate or other party position.