Change vs. Inertia at the DNC and State Parties

For all you history buffs, or anyone looking to create major institutional changes within the DNC or the Democratic State Parties, I can't recommend highly enough Daniel J. Galvin's 20-odd page history of the DNC from the 1980s 1990s through the final days of Howard Dean's chairmanship: Changing Course: Reversing the Organizational Trajectory of the Democratic Party from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama (pdf). Major hat tip to J.P. Green at Democratic Strategist for bringing it to my attention.

The main thrust of the paper is that, with Democratic Majorities firmly established, Clinton abandoned long-term party building to have the DNC focus solely on the passage of his policy agenda. As a result of this focus on policy, not party building, Clinton and the DNC were slow to adapt to the new playing field after the 1994 Republican Revolution. What followed was a slow climb out of a deep whole - both of substantial financial debt and a severe lack of sophisticated infrastructure.

Galvin argues that as the Democrats suffered electorally, first in Congress, and then in the Executive Branch, party building - and electoral innovation generally - became the norm within the DNC and the Party, culminating with Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy and the mass movement that was the Obama campaign. The crux, though, is that it was defeat which spurred innovation, while success created inertia and stagnation:

The notion that competition drives the minority party to adapt, innovate, and rebuild is not new to political science. A long tradition of scholarship has identified the political “losers” as “the desperate ones; they are the ones whose survival is at stake; they are the ones driven by their despair to seek ways to triumph; they are, therefore, the inventors. Defeat is the mother of invention.”

In the wake of defeat, losing parties are driven to act in an innovative fashion. They develop new policy alternatives, elevate new issues of salience, and co-opt the opposition. They rebuild their structures and strategies, experiment with new techniques, and seek to develop new organizational capacities to regain their competitiveness.

[...]

New electoral conditions created new incentives for party building, but translating the actors’ new motives and purposes into durable organizational change happened only gradually, over the course of many years. Indeed, in the Democratic Party’s journey from its deep and durable majorities of the post-New Deal period to its great uncertainty in the 21st century, we can observe the emergence of the party-building impulse as well as the challenges involved in changing the course of party history.

Why do I bring this up? Not just because it's an excellent lesson in history of which we should all be aware. I bring it up because many of us in the youth community - especially those who work in partisan organizing - still see that we have a long way to go before young voters, who were so important a player this election cycle, are truly integrated into the party's infrastructure and outreach strategies. Our work is not yet done. As Obama pollster Cornell Belcher noted in his memo to Howard Dean, there was a 20% drop-off down ballot in young voter turnout. Now is not the time to dial down the 50 state strategy. Now is the time to turn it up with a focus on youth and communities of color. As Galvin notes, though, history suggests this is not likely to happen:

It is an open question, however, whether a President Obama and his fellow party leaders would perceive a need for further party building in 2009 and beyond. If the Democrats manage to bring strong majorities into Congress and make significant gains at the local level, as some are predicting – if Obama succeeds in building the “new majority” about which he speaks 76 – will the Democrats’ collective commitment to organizational development survive? As discussed, the party-building impulse is intimately related to the desire to build a new majority, and the more comfortable the party’s competitive standing, the less motivation we should expect for party building.

[...]

From what we can glean from the past, this much is clear: changing the organizational trajectory of the Democratic Party has not happened quickly or easily, and it certainly has not followed automatically from changes in the political environment. Party leaders have been motivated by the decline in the competitive standing of their party to make long-term investments in party organization, but their changes have been incremental and their gains have been cumulative. If Democrats are to heed Bradley’s advice and continue to “build a stable pyramid from the base up,” then they should plan to look past the results of the 2008 election – whatever they may be – keep up the momentum, and continue building upon the gains made over the last decade.

Across the country, at all levels of government (on average), Democrats are sitting pretty. I fear that in they eyes of many party strategists and campaign managers - particularly at the state and local level - the battle is won. Our winning coalition is forged all we must do is sit back and reap the rewards. But as the Belcher memo shows, we're not sitting pretty. We're likely leaving millions of votes on the table. The question now is this - will the DNC and state parties sit back, content with their gains? Will they give in to the inertia of WIN? Or will they stay hungry and work to adapt Obama's successes to down-ballot races?

For our part, we're going to need to recognize this inertia and find ways to combat it.