Let's talk about the DNC

You may think you're mad at them but actually you're probably mad at yourself

Given my day job, I receive a lot of opinions about what the Democratic Party should be doing. Sometimes they're right! Sometimes I disagree vehemently.

But nothing activates my spidey senses faster than "the DNC should [insert tactic or strategy here]."

Because 99% of the time, someone saying that does not really understand what the DNC does or why what they’re saying is likely ridiculous. They are (understandably!) confused about what the Democratic Party even is anymore, and who to direct their frustrations at.

Spoiler: It’s almost certainly not the DNC. It’s probably no one — and also, somehow, everyone.

Let me explain…

What is the DNC anyway?

The Democratic National Committee is, by definition, the entity that governs the Democratic Party. Located in what is (tbh) a depressing building right near the Capitol, the DNC is run by a chair and board elected by DNC members, who in turn were elected by state party members.

The DNC’s official mission is to coordinate strategy and support Democrats at every level of government, with a focus on presidential elections. So I could see why you might think they’re the people to be mad at when you are frustrated by the Democratic Party!

Alas. You are wrong.

This weekend (April 9-11, depending on when you read this), DNC delegates are meeting in New Orleans for their spring meeting, where they are voting on a whole mess of non-binding resolutions, doing some self-inflicted harm by generating negative press, and other odds and ends.

Here are some things the DNC is not doing and does not do:

• Endorsing candidates

• Recruiting candidates

• Telling people who should or should not run

• Writing TV or digital ads

• Telling campaigns what to do

• Telling elected officials what to do or how to vote

• Making the rules for party or voter registration

• Deciding party messaging

• Rig elections. (While it’s absolutely fair to say the DNC has overstepped over the years, it simply doesn’t have the structural power people assume it has.)

They do not actually set strategy. They do not define top targets. They do not really engage with campaigns directly.

Don’t get me wrong: There are real things the DNC does that matter! That list includes:

• Maintaining the voter file¹ that most candidates use, along with some other party tech & data resources

• Coordinating the Democratic National Convention every four years

• Giving money to state parties, who work directly with state and local candidates

• Functioning as the political arm of the White House when there’s a Democrat in office

• Running social media accounts (including this one that does great clipping)

• Vote on a party platform (that, while carefully negotiated over, bears little to no causal relationship to what elected officials actually legislate on)

• Most importantly: Organize the presidential primary — including determining which states vote in what order. (And ahead of that process, it’s really important that people trust the DNC. We have seen what happens in years past when people do not believe the institution is a fair and neutral arbiter! This is why DNC officials are not allowed to engage in primaries. I think this is a good rule.)

But it doesn’t do the things people think it does. In fact, no one does!

* * *

Because as I mentioned last week, the Democratic Party doesn’t really exist in the way people imagine it might. In fact, I wrote about this last spring ahead of the NYC primary:

I can say this with my full chest, as a professional Democrat: There is no secret cabal of decision-makers who drive a singular plan. (If there was, do you think all of this is how any of it would go?)

There is only a loosely connected group of elected officials, activists, donors, grasstops leaders, and of course, voters, who drive us all forward in hopefully a generally similar direction.

Sometimes all those people come around to the same general goal — … [like] when after the debate, it became clear that Joe Biden was not fit to run for re-election — but even in that effort, there was tension and disagreement.

More often, it functions like a web of group-chats and social media posts, convenings and dinners, all without anyone really in charge.

The DNC is not in charge ….

Donors are not in charge (as much as they’d like to be).

Even the electeds themselves are not really in charge (especially the ones who don’t have solid bases of enthusiastic supporters behind them.)

I’d add to that list nearly a year later: The committees,² super PACs, and consultants are also not in charge. The online twitterati is not in charge. I am not in charge!

I say this with love and respect, and as someone who has been inside this thing for most of my adult life: The Democratic Party is less of an institution and more of a collective hallucination (with a billion dollars at its disposal) — it exists in part because enough people believe it does, and it moves in the direction that enough people push it in.

That used to feel like a bug. I’m increasingly convinced it’s a feature.

* * *

Now, on the one hand: A weak political party is bad!

There are real challenges with the state of things (including but not limited to, as this op-ed in the NYT notes, a transition from organizations-connected-to-people to organizations-connected-to-message-testing).

The authors of the piece are scholars who wrote a whole book about the broader “hollow party” problem on both sides. The Democratic Party has essentially become an ineffective blob and the Republican Party has been captured by Trump and extremism all the way down.

Because there's no one in charge, there's no one obvious to be mad at — and therefore it's much harder to know who to hold accountable.

That's why people yell at "the DNC." It's an entity you can see. It's punching the bag you can reach.

On the other hand: No one in charge means anyone could be in charge.

That’s one of many reasons these competitive primaries are so exciting — the future of the party is up for grabs.

Hell, that there are primaries at all is one of the leading indicators that the establishment and old guard (such as it exists) doesn’t have the juice. They’re all bark, no bite.

In decades past, when the party machine was stronger, they could’ve boxed people out — made it impossible to hire staff or consultants, filed legal challenges to keep people off the ballot or scared donors out of giving. This year? No dice. All the threats in the world didn’t work.

There can be no top-down control when there no one at the top. That’s equal parts scary and free-ing.

* * *

Bear with me on this segue, but I spent March making edits on the paperback version of When We’re in Charge, which will be out this September. (Pre-order now!!) — this was the first time I’d really closely re-read the book in its entirety since I submitted the final manuscript back in February 2025.

I closed it with these final sentences:

We’re redefining leadership as we go, both at work and outside of it. In the coming years, new politicians will be taking office, new CEOs will take the reins, new celebrities and influencers will come into the spotlight—and they (you! we!) will expand our collective imagination about what could be. In the process, we’ll reshape the economy, communities, and our relationships to work, to rest, and to purpose.

When we’re in charge, just about anything and maybe even everything is possible.

I wrote that anticipating change that felt theoretical at the time.

It doesn't feel theoretical anymore.

Barely a month after the book came out, Zohran Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic nomination for mayor. Around the same time, Glassdoor put out a new survey that showed millennials are now the largest share of managers in the American workforce.

The pendulum was already swinging — away from the old guard and toward something else, something newer and, I'd argue, more joyful, hopeful, and optimistic.

I was right. (I love being right.)

* * *

So here is what I come back to every time I think about people’s frustrations with the Democratic Party — many of which I share:

The party is not a machine. It’s more like a group chat — chaotic, disorganized, chronically over-messaged, and occasionally decisive when enough people actually decide to do something together. No one appointed anyone to run it. (Sorry to Ken Martin). No one is going to run it (at least, not until we get through the presidential primary.)

But that also means the question isn’t really “what will the Democratic Party do?”

It’s: What are you going to do?

Run for something. Volunteer for a campaign you believe in. Show up to your local party meeting even when it’s uncomfortable — especially when it’s uncomfortable. Give money to candidates. Have a dinner party and actually talk about this stuff. Pick up the phone.

The DNC doesn’t run the party. The party doesn’t really run the party. You run the party — or you could, if you wanted to.

That is a lot of responsibility to put on you. Sorry!

It’s also an invitation. We don’t have to revert to the status quo. We don’t have to go back to normal, we don’t have to defer to the people who have always been in charge just because they’re used to being in charge. We get to decide what the Democratic Party is and becomes if we want to.

We don’t have to settle. We really, genuinely don’t.

* * *

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While I have you…

I woke up on Thursday thinking I was going to write about the latest round of Democratic Party discourse that David Plouffe jump-started with an op-ed in the New York Times, declaring that every campaign should be operating like a production studio.

But then I realized: I’ve basically written about my thoughts on this over and over again over the last year+.

I’ve made the case that we vote for people, first and foremost, but people dismiss it because who runs feels like a thing we cannot control.

I’ve talked about how hard it is to be authentic when you don’t know who you are or what you believe in the first place — and why authenticity matters more than ever anyway.

Most relevantly, I’ve written both in this Substack and at length in When We’re in Charge about how influencer culture has shaped leadership both publicly and privately, and how every leader should think of themselves as an effective influencer.

(I also did two videos on Instagram that sum up where I’m at — you can watch them here or here.)

So TLDR, I think David is right, candidates should make a lot of content to reach people, and also: Tactics like videos or memes or whatever are only as effective as the candidate themselves is at communicating them, and a candidate is most effective if/when they genuinely know what they believe. (And the reason we debate tactics is because most people think of candidate as a “fixed variable.” It’s not.)

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Pick up a copy of When We’re in Charge in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audiobook (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books. You can check Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else, including your local library. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.

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1. The “voter file” = the list of all voters in a district, along with lots of data we have on them including vote/volunteer history, contact history, etc. It’s how a candidate knows who to talk to.

2. That’s the cohort of groups like the DCCC, DSCC, DGA, DLCC, and others that function as organizing bodies for Democrats at various levels of office. Most have aligned super PACs who work independent of the committees and candidates.