The 448 members of the Democratic National Committee will elect a new Chair and other officers on February 1, 2025 – not a minute too soon. They will base their choices on the candidates’ ability, experience, and plans. But I wouldn’t be a history guy if I didn’t look back at analysis of past DNCs and their chairs to identify experiences that may guide us going forward.
Thomas Jefferson is credited with founding what is now the Democratic Party, but the DNC was first created in 1848. It has evolved substantially over that time and expanded to year-round operations, but many of its functions remain. DNC activities include: Providing rules for presidential nomination contests and overseeing the national convention, managing and improving party organization, supporting state parties, training, voter registration and voter protection, candidate recruitment, providing services to candidates, raising money, providing technology and data, coordinating with Presidential, Congressional and state leadership, engaging constituency and allied groups, research, focusing public policy, handling publicity and media communications, improving the party’s image, and telling the truth about the opposition.
Roles of the DNC Chair include “image-maker, hell-raiser, fund-raiser, campaign manager, and administrator.” Older studies note that the out-party Chair may share party leadership roles with Congressional leaders, governors, and the “titular leader” historically viewed as the losing presidential candidate, although former presidents may sometimes claim that mantle (a role that appears to have diminished in recent years).
One big difference in committee operations is whether the committee’s party is in or out of the White House. With a Democratic president and his political staff calling the shots, the DNC has a more limited role. The President may engage in party-building or in a “predatory” way to dimmish party activities. The out party has more incentive to adapt, innovate, and rebuild – “Defeat is the mother of invention.”
Here are some books that analyze national party committees:
Boris Heersink, National Party Organizations and Party Brands in American Parties: The Democratic and Republican National Committees, Oxford Univ. Press, 2023 – A comprehensive look at both in- and out- party committees, focusing on their role in creating a positive image or brand for the party. The national committees strive to deliver messages to connect voters with the party’s policy positions and attack the other party as corrupt, failing, and/or incompetent. Messaging can be a challenge due to changing media, the party’s inability to adopt and implement public policies, and competing messages from individual candidates and other opinion makers. The book runs from 1912, when parties decided to keep their national committees active between elections, to 2016. The main conclusion is that national committees provide varying levels of services including assisting candidates and managing the party, they also can take positions on policy, engage in publicity efforts, and have an underappreciated, complex, and increasingly difficult role in shaping a party’s brand.
Philip A. Klinker, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956-1993, Yale Univ. Press, 1994 – An excellent account of activities of out-party committee activity from 1956-1984. Losing invites innovation and reform. National committee actions can be viewed as falling into the following categories: Organizational, policy (including messaging), and/or procedural (rules) responses. Spoiler alert: Democrats typically do procedure, Republicans typically do organization. For more, see DemRulz, “A New Direction for The Democratic National Committee”
Ralph M. Goldman, The National Party Chairmen and Committees: Factionalism at the Top, M.E. Sharp, Inc. 1990 – A review of American political history concentrating on national party committees and their chairs, from 1848 to 1960. The book analyses the chair’s role in mediating party factional disputes (RNC Chair William H. Hayes, 1918, League of Nations,) or pushing the policy interests of a party faction (DNC Chair John J. Raskob, 1928 anti-prohibition). An interesting split occurred in 1955 when Democratic Congressional leaders adopted a “responsibility in opposition” strategy of working with President Eisenhower as much as possible, while DNC Chair Paul Butler insisted that Democrats emphasize their own program and set up the Democratic Advisory Council to draft it. Note also that several Chairs (and FDR before his election) sent out questionnaires to thousands of party officers and activists, seeking advice on improving the party organization.
Seth Masket, Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016-2020, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020 – The University of Denver political science professor analyzes the reasons for the Democrats’ 2016 loss and the responses (especially rules reforms) which followed. (He sat in on many DNC RBC meetings, bless him.) He concludes that the DNC “focused on repairing what it saw as dangerous divisions within the party and restoring the perceived legitimacy of the party’s decision-making process.”
Cornelius P. Cotter and Bernard C. Hennessy, Politics Without Power: The National Party Committees, Transaction Pub., 1954 – Two Committee insiders focus of the inability of the national committees to make policy, but the need for them to construct the party’s image and “maintain a steady flow of hard-hitting propaganda aimed at keeping the party in public favor.” In the 1950s, national committees were financed in part by contributions to the state parties (now it’s the other way around). For more, See DemRulz, “DNC: ‘Politics Without Power’?”
Daniel J. Galvin, Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush, Princeton Univ. Press, 2010 – Galvin focuses on in-parties and argues that the role of presidents in party building has been underrated and that presidential behavior in the relevant period differs between the parties. Because the Republican Party was viewed as a minority party for most of the period, Republican Presidents were more likely to try to build the party to establish their legacy. Democrats, viewed as the majority party (despite not winning the White House), did not have an incentive to party build, but focused on managing organizational components, including big city machines, labor unions, and liberal activists. (Although he credits Clinton’s second term with party building.) The argument stretches a bit, but offers a more nuanced view than the standard view that Presidents weaken the in-party committee. (The book predates the Trump administrations, which I suspect was/is more predatory towards the party than any previous president.)
Sean J. Savage, Roosevelt: The Party Leader,1932-1945, Univ. Press Kentucky, 1991 – A very readable account of FDR’s relationship with the DNC. In the 1920s, he pushed the DNC to democratize its decision-making and fundraising through reforms such as issues conventions and small donor appeals, with a goal of expanding the party and liberalizing party ideology. Once he became president, he used the DNC to maintain intraparty harmony and created special divisions for women, youth, labor and African American voters, fostering the New Deal Coalition.
Hugh A. Bone, Party Committees and National Politics, Univ. Washington Press, 1958 – an important early although somewhat dated analysis of the role and activities of the national party committees.