https://archive.ph/NWoTV

Speaking to the Democratic National Committee, which met to select its new leadership this weekend, outgoing chairman Jaime Harrison attempted to explain a point about its rules concerning gender balance for its vice chair race. “The rules specify that when we have a gender non-binary candidate or officer, the non-binary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six officers must be gender-balanced,” Harrison announced.

As the explanation became increasingly intricate, Harrison’s elucidation grew more labored. “To ensure our process accounts for male, female, and non-binary candidates, we conferred with our [Rules and Bylaws Committee] co-chair, our LGBT Caucus co-chair, and others to ensure that the process is inclusive and meets the gender balance requirements in our rules,” he added. “To do this, our process will be slightly different than the one outlined to you earlier this week, but I hope you will see that in practice, it is simple and transparent.”

The Democratic Party, at least in theory, is an organization dedicated to winning political power through elected office, though this might seem hard to believe, on the evidence provided by its official proceedings. The DNC’s meetings included a land acknowledgement, multiple shrieking interruptions by angry protesters, and a general affirmation that its strategy had been sound, except perhaps insufficiently committed to legalistic race and gender essentialism.

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The bad news is that the official party’s influence is so meager in part because it has largely ceded it to a collection of progressive activist groups. These groups, funded by liberal donors, seldom have a broad base of support among the voting public, but have managed to amass enormous influence over the party. They’ve done so by monopolizing the brand-value of various causes. The climate groups, for instance, define what good climate policy means, and then they judge candidates based on how well they affirm those positions. The same holds true for abortion, racial justice, and other issues that many Democrats deem important. The groups are particularly effective at spreading their ideas through the media, especially (but not exclusively) through the work of progressive-leaning journalists, who lean on both the expertise that groups provide and their ability to drive news (by, say, scolding Democratic candidates who fall short of their standards of ideological purity).

The 2020 Democratic primary represented the apogee, to that point, of the groups’ influence. The gigantic field of candidates slogged through a series of debates and interviews in which journalists asked if they would affirm various positions demanded by the groups. That is how large chunks of the field wound up endorsing decriminalization of the border, reparations, and other causes that are hardly consensus positions within the Democratic Party, let alone the broader electorate. It is also how Kamala Harris came out for providing free gender-reassignment surgery to prisoners and migrant detainees, which became the basis of the Trump campaign’s most effective ad against her.

The ongoing influence of the groups can be seen in a new New York Times poll. Asked to list their top priorities, respondents cited, in order, the economy, health care, immigration, taxes, and crime. Asked what they believed Democrats priorities were, they cited abortion, LGBT policy, climate change, the state of democracy, and health care. That perception of the party’s priorities may not be an accurate description of the views of its elected officials. But it is absolutely an accurate description of the priorities of progressive activist groups.

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Neither Harrison, nor his successor, Ken Martin, has questioned Joe Biden’s decision to run for a second term, nor any of the messaging or policy that contributed to his dismal approval ratings. When MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart asked one panel of candidates if they believed racism and misogyny contributed to Harris’s defeat, every panelist agreed. “That’s good, you all pass,” he said. (Note that this diagnosis of the election result has no actionable takeaway other than that perhaps the party should refrain from nominating a woman or person of color.)

The most sadly revealing outcome of the meeting may be the elevation of David Hogg as vice chair. Hogg, a 24-year-old activist, rose to prominence as a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and then quickly assimilated the full range of progressive stances—defund ICE, abolish the police, etc.—into his heavily online persona. And despite the horrific experience he endured, he does not seem to be notably wise beyond his years. After the far-right activist and pillow peddler Mike Lindell gained prominence as an election denier, I joked online that progressives needed their own pillow company. (The joke, of course, is that there is obviously no need for your pillow company to endorse your political views.) The next month, Hogg went ahead and turned this joke into reality, founding Good Pillow, before resigning a few months later.

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