Is There A New Democratic Establishment?
Is There A New Democratic Establishment?
The DNC saw off an old guard and showcased a new. What do they believe?
With the Democratic National Convention now in the rearview mirror, it’s a mad two-and-a-half-week dash to the first presidential debate, and a two-and-a-half-month dash to the election. President Joe Biden once told his intraparty enemies they’d have to pry the nomination from his cold, dead hands. They took him at his word, and Vice President Kamala Harris is now the Democratic nominee for president.
It was a humiliating moment for what remains of the incumbent president when he passed the torch to his number two the first night of the DNC.
Biden believed his presidency would end like this: “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden told a crowd in March 2020, “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw [standing] behind me. They are the future of this country.” He just didn’t believe that time would come so soon.
But it wasn’t just Harris who received the baton. It was a broader cast of Democratic politicians inheriting the mantle from the old guard of the Democratic party.
The convention was even structured as such—albeit with some exceptions.
The president and First Lady Jill Biden addressed the crowd in Chicago on Monday night. “I can honestly say I’m more optimistic about the future than I was when I was elected as a 29-year-old United States Senator,” President Biden said, followed by his trademark “I mean it.”
“Kamala and Tim, you will win and you are inspiring a new generation,” the first lady similarly stated. “It’s going to take all of us and we can’t afford to lose. With faith in each other, hope for a brighter future and love for our country, we will fight and we will win together.”
But it wasn’t just the Bidens’ swan song. Though eight years overdue, it was curtain call for the Clintons. While former President Bill Clinton addressed the crowd Wednesday night, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton preceded the Bidens on Monday in a speech littered with reprised bits from her losing 2016 campaign. Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” “it takes a village,” and the “glass ceiling” all made a comeback.
“Tonight, so close to breaking through once and for all, I want to tell you what I see through all those cracks and why it matters for each and every one of us. What do I see? I see freedom,” Clinton claimed. “On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our forty-seventh president of the United States.”
While Bill wouldn’t address the crowd until night three, it was his delivery, rather than the convention’s structure, that suggested Bill is a bygone. As TAC’s Curt Mills wrote, “Clinton is now on similar enough footing as the kindred Southerner he never quite cared for. Like Jimmy Carter, the Democratic Party of 2024 could take or leave Bill Clinton.”
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the man most responsible for Biden’s presidency, also spoke Monday night. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) spoke Tuesday. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed the convention Wednesday. She thanked Biden, but said, “I know Vice President Harris is ready to take us to new heights.”
The Obamas, meanwhile, were right in the middle. All too fitting for the pair that forced the current changing of the guard. Barack Obama has graduated from president to kingmaker.
And they, along with some other allies in the old guard like Pelosi, have coronated Harris. But who are the other inheritors of this not-so-peaceful transfer of power?
In an interesting twist, the shift has the potential to decentralize power within the Democratic party away from Washington, DC because the Democratic bench is currently replete with gubernatorial talent—Gavin Newsom in California, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. If Democrats win in November, maybe there will be more centralization behind Harris, whose favorability until roughly two minutes ago was 15 points underwater. If Harris loses, does the Democratic party devolve into warring fiefdoms until 2028?
There are still inheritors on Capitol Hill, however. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is well positioned. But so is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), because of her detente with the Democratic establishment while maintaining her progressive “squad” bona fides. On the Senate side, the Georgia delegation of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff seemed well positioned. Maybe it isn’t too late for Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
But what does this new guard actually believe? If Harris is their leader, even they don’t seem to know. The best explanation Jon Favreau, the former Obama speechwriter turned podcast host, could offer was that Harris is a “mainstream Democrat.” That once meant being a card-carrying neoliberal like the Clintons and Bidens.
Therein lies the problem for former President Donald Trump and his campaign. In 2020, the Trump campaign discovered it’s actually quite difficult to beat a dead horse. This time around, the challenge for Trump is branding a product that does not exist (Harris still does not have any policies listed on her website). Luckily, branding is kind of his thing.
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