Dems must work to rebuild party at state, local levels
As speculation grows over the character and agenda of the incoming administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., it has become clear that one of the greatest challenges he will face is managing the Democratic Party.
Moderates and progressives have already had a significant head-on collision in the after
Adam Hilton is an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College and the author of “True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party.” math of the 2020 elections, in which congressional Democrats were widely considered to have underperformed. Internal party disagreements center on the factors behind this perceived “failure,” with moderates like Representatives Abigail Spanberger and Conor Lamb pinning responsibility on progressives’ divisive campaign messaging, and progressives, such as Representative Alexandria OcasioCortez, pointing the finger at organizational failures in digital mobilization.
These disagreements are likely to continue to simmer for the foreseeable future, and they may decisively shape the Biden presidency. That is because despite widespread attention paid to the specific personalities or specific issues involved, these intraparty tensions reflect more than ideological or policy divisions. They are rooted in the long-term structural transformation of the Democratic Party since the late 1960s.
Over the past several decades the Democratic Party has become what I call an “advocacy party” —
a party that relies heavily on its association with social movements and advocacy groups for help with messaging and mobilizing voters. Movements, in turn, get some of their demands added to the party’s agenda and their representatives get a seat at the table.
This has created new dilemmas for Democratic presidents and larger problems for national governance.
On the one hand, the party’s dependence on groups and the causes that animate them makes it especially hard to balance base demands with broader, less polarized appeals to swing voters. It is tough to tamp down demands to “Defund the Police” when the party enjoys the overwhelming support of young voters and African Americans due to its historical association with civil rights and its recent receptivity to Black Lives Matter. These groups drove Biden to his narrow victory in key swing states, even as their slogans may have carried electoral costs in swing districts.
This dilemma has already dealt the Biden presidency a setback in its congressional base of support, and will likely figure prominently in next month’s decisive Georgia runoffs that will finalize the partisan balance in Congress.
On the other hand, the advocacy party contributes to other problematic trends in our politics, such as presidential unilateralism and executive aggrandizement. We are already likely to see President Biden take up executive action as the most viable path to policy change, especially if Congress remains under divided control. But movements, which wax and wane, often express frustration with the slow-moving policy process under the best circumstances and direct their demands toward presidents, pressing them to “act now.”
With this in mind, one of Biden’s most impactful actions could be making sustained investments in rebuilding Democratic organizations, especially at state and local levels. Research has shown that presidents can be among the most pivotal actors in party-building activity. Moreover, by revitalizing the party’s organizational capacities to reach everyday voters, it could move the Democrats away from a structural dependence on nonparty sources of support and ameliorate some of the dilemmas of its advocacy party model.
Rebuilding the Democratic Party in this way does not necessarily entail pushing movement activists out of the picture. On the contrary, grassroots activists have been flooding into local party organizations across the country over the past four years, rebooting their ossified operations. As leader of the Democratic Party, Biden has the opportunity to channel this frenetic energy of movement activism into positive partisan identification.
Such an undertaking is unlikely to yield immediate results. Party building is a slow process. But it could lay the foundation for a future durable Democratic majority.