(CNN) – The Democratic National Committee is on the verge of dramatic change, shifting its role as an opposition force challenging Donald Trump at every step to a political megaphone for a Democratic-dominated Washington.
And the man several senior Democrats say should become the party’s next president – Jaime Harrison, the former president of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a Senate candidate in 2020 – is eager to get to work.
“I still don’t have the job,” said Harrison on Thursday, the day after the two Senate contests in Georgia were called up for Democrats, giving the party control of Congress in Washington. “I hope to do it.”
Before the disputes in Georgia were called, Democrats were preparing for the early years of President-elect Joe Biden in office to be hard work defined by the Republican blockades in the Senate. But once Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won the victory in Georgia, a new reality emerged in the Democrats: the Democratic National Committee will not only be an extension of the White House’s political operation over the next four years, but probably the party’s most powerful amplifier for announce and boast of Democratic achievements in Washington.
Harrison said he believed, especially after Georgia, that the DNC’s first job would be to announce legislative victories.
“The job of doing the job is on the hill and in the White House, the job of making sure that the message gets across, promoted and disseminated to voters and for those voters to understand that, I believe it’s the job of the DNC,” said Harrison , describing the work as “getting the message across” so that people “understand that this is what you get when there are Democrats in control.”
He added: “The bet has increased dramatically after Georgia.”
The scenario also presents a second chance for Biden and his team of advisers, many of whom were senior officials during the eight years of Obama’s presidency, a time that corresponded with Democratic parties struggling and significant losses in electoral disputes.
In response to questions about how Biden will approach the Democratic National Committee as president, a Biden campaign official said that, unlike the Obama White House, the Biden team will not create an outside group like Obama’s Organizing for America and “instead in addition, it will be channeling our efforts through the party structure. “
“Moving forward, the DNC under President-elect Biden will continue to invest in the party states and maintain a strong partnership with them,” said the governor, an important point for state party presidents who, more than anything, want to know that the funding of the national party will continue.
But there are still doubts about how the Biden White House will work with the committee, with much of the focus falling on Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s next deputy chief of staff.
The Democratic National Committee will come under O’Malley Dillon in the White House, Democratic sources told CNN, meaning that Biden’s former campaign manager will be tasked with ensuring that the political committee works in line with the goals Biden’s politicians. O’Malley Dillon was the executive director of the DNC after Obama’s election in 2008.
Harrison is widely seen by broad strata of the Democratic Party as the only real candidate for the position of party president. After running for the Democratic Party of South Carolina, Harrison ran for president after the 2016 election, losing to Perez. Harrison then ran for the Senate in 2020, challenging Trump’s loyal senator Lindsey Graham. Although he failed to overthrow Graham, Harrison increased his profile and became a prolific fundraiser, raising more than $ 130 million in what has become a nationalized campaign.
The committee will officially consider the successor of current President Tom Perez, along with a list of vice presidents and other senior officials, at a virtual meeting on January 21. But the decision is mainly up to Biden, who will be able to highlight his choice of DNC before the meeting.
Harrison is seen as a strong choice by Democrats because he held several party positions – president of the state, DNC officer, candidate – and is seen as someone who understands what it is like to be a democrat in a red state the investment needed in places like Carolina southern.
A post-Trump party
The Democratic National Committee has prospered in resisting Trump over the past four years under Perez, making what was a rudderless and scandal-prone organization a key figure in Biden’s victory. The move helped Democrats break fund-raising records.
When Perez took over the DNC in 2017, loyal supporters were horrified by two main issues: the state of abandonment within the committee after the departure of former President Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the level of distrust that raged among more progressive Democrats about how Bernie Sanders was treated in his 2016 nomination fight against Hillary Clinton. Perez began working to resolve both issues, investing millions in rebuilding the party’s infrastructure and overseeing the creation of the Unit Reform Commission that studied the issues that led to widespread distrust.
And in many ways, the work was worth it. Towards 2021, according to party officials, the donor base that contributes to the committee each month is twice as high as at any point in the committee’s history. The party raised $ 102 million in online fundraising alone in 2020, surpassing the $ 61 million it raised in 2004, which had previously been its best year.
Perez, reflecting on the past four years, said that whoever takes over for him in the coming weeks will have a job much more focused on publicizing victories than cleaning up after defeats.
“I firmly believe that good governance is a great policy,” Perez said in an interview with CNN. “But what I learned from 2009 and 2010 is that the disinformation campaigns that will come out there will be relentless. So we need to make sure that we are not only keeping our promises, but communicating to people across the country, exactly what we are doing . “
With the committee’s role changing, however, Democrats now face the harsh reality: as bad as the Democratic National Committee argued that Trump was for the country, he was astonishingly good for business.
“Donald Trump was the best tool the Democratic Party has ever had,” said Chris Korge, chairman of national finance for the committee.
Trump provided cover for Democrats for four years, stifling many of the inter-party struggles that bogged down the committee before the 2016 election and allowing the party to focus more directly on defeating all common Democratic enemies – Trump. It also increased enthusiasm among Democrats and increased the number of fundraisers.
“One of the challenges that we can obviously try to address while defeating Trump, we have not yet defeated Trumpism,” said Perez. “Trumpism is something that persists across America. There is no doubt about it.”
Harrison said he does not care about the party’s future after Trump, arguing that continuing to invest in infrastructure and build parties across the country will make the party a resilient force beyond the Trump presidency. At the center of this, he said, was Biden, who he argued was a committed party builder.
“I believe that President-elect Biden has the potential not only to be an incredible president,” said Harrison, “but to be one of the best, if not the best, party builders we’ve seen in my life.”
A second chance
For Biden, the prospect of a Democratic National Committee focused on investing in state parties and electoral disputes is a second chance.
While President Barack Obama has reinvigorated Democrats in his two candidacies for the presidency, even loyal party members believe that one area where he failed was in the growth of the party’s political infrastructure, rather than focusing his attention on his own political committee external after its victories in 2008 and 2012. The results were disastrous for the party, including a Democratic National Committee that was in ruins in 2016 and substantial losses to state legislatures across the country.
“When I arrived at the DNC, we didn’t just have a crisis of confidence, but we had an infrastructure that was embarrassingly devoid of critical components,” said Perez, noting that in the days following Trump’s election, the DNC has little capacity to mobilize in around what was a wave of opposition to the Republican leader.
Although Biden was not the main political figure in the eight years that saw the DNC fall into ruins, he and several people close to him held positions of power and some Democrats fear that the same mistakes that affected the Obama years could follow the White House. of Biden.
In a sign of hope for Democrats, the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee worked closely together during the 2020 campaign, executing a coordinated effort that included the national committee and the state parties. And a Biden campaign official told CNN that both Biden and elected vice president Kamala Harris “understand the important role that the DNC and state parties play” in the Democratic ecosystem.
Jeff Weaver, who led Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016, but has since worked closely with the Democratic National Committee, said Biden’s positive stance towards the Democratic National Committee during the campaign was “100%”, an acknowledgment that lessons have been learned from the Obama years.
“Everything happens in a historical context,” said Weaver. “President Obama’s relationship with the party apparatus was not great in 2008, but we are in a different place now and the challenges facing the party are different.”
Now that Democrats have managed to overthrow Trump, top Democrats believe that the way to continue much of the work that has happened in the past four years is to commit to building the party’s infrastructure.
“What is really important and not necessarily easy is to build on the infrastructure improvements that have been made over the past four years,” said Congresswoman Grace Meng, vice president of the committee. “The easiest thing and the last thing we want to do is go back and not build on the success we have achieved in recent years and take voters for granted.”
For other Democrats, however, Trump’s lessons are more existential and highlight the need to create a specific brand that faces the fact that Trumpism will be a resilient force in politics for years to come.
“Trump will still be around. The aspirants will be around. The Republican Party is the Trump Party now,” said Kelly Dietrich, founder and CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee. “We need to learn some of Trump’s lessons. No one ever says, ‘Oh, Obama shouldn’t have done that much in his first two years.’ No, forget it, we must overload people by writing about it, putting people’s feet on fire. “
He added: “I prefer not to believe (that some aspects of Trump’s style work), but that’s not how life works.”
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