CHICAGO — One of the running gags on social media among many Democratic activists is to mock the media with the meme “Democrats in disarray.”
When Republicans are fighting, someone posts “Dems in disarray.” When Trump attacks a fellow Republican, cue the “Dems in disarray” gag from various corners of political social media. When Democrats coalesce behind a unity ticket: “Dems in disarray.” You see where this goes.
The whole “Dems in disarray” trope dates back to a previous generation of Democrats who regularly used the media to debate among themselves the right direction for their party, whether on the policy front or on the campaign trail, while Republicans kept their internal disputes a lot more private. And when the Democrats regularly showcased their disagreements in the media, it left the sometimes-exaggerated impression that the party wasn’t as united as the GOP simply because the GOP kept its divides under wraps.
Follow live updates on the DNC
But since the onset of the Donald Trump era, it has been the GOP in a constant state of disarray. It makes sense given that Trump has been trying to remake the GOP in his own image and that that image is in stark contrast to the belief system of the more traditional GOP brand names of the last 30 years — think Bush, Romney, Cheney, Ryan or McConnell. Other than defeating Democrats on Election Day and cutting taxes, there isn’t a lot that Republicans agree on these days. There are huge divides over trade and economic policy and more fundamental disagreements over the role America should play in global security. On character, the rule of law and more, the divide in the party is there for all the world to see.
Perhaps the best example of this absurd level of public disarray on the right in the Trump era is the 2018 government shutdown. Even though it controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency, the party ended up stumbling into a government shutdown after the midterm elections. It’s the only government shutdown to take place at a time when the government was not divided by party. Obviously, more proof of “Dems in disarray.”
By contrast, the Trump era has made the Democrats more cohesive and, in turn, more pragmatic and publicly unified. The one thing that most unites the party is defeating Trump, and it can create clarity of purpose. When Sen. Joe Manchin and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can both endorse Kamala Harris in the same news cycle, you know you have a Democratic Party that as an institution is quite healthy … at least for the moment.
For those of us who have been covering politics since before the turn of the century, it’s a striking change in how both parties behave. It was the Republicans who always had an order to how they did things; it was always someone’s “turn” to be the nominee — whether Ronald Reagan in ’80 or George H.W. Bush in ’88 or Bob Dole in ’96 or John McCain in ’08, each of them having previously run for president and lost. The party was bigger than any one person; sure, Reagan was a North Star, but he was never bigger than the institution of the GOP. Neither was Dole or either Bush or McCain. It wasn’t until Trump that the party began to organize itself more as a cult-of-personality party, rather than an institution.
As for the Democrats, for much of the ’70s and ’80s (and even with Bill Clinton), they were always in search of their next cult of personality — or, more specifically in that period, their next “Kennedy.” They wanted to fall in love the way the party fell in love with John F. Kennedy in 1960. So powerful was this idea of finding the “next Kennedy” that the single most important moment of Clinton’s 1992 convention was the debut of footage of a young, teenaged Clinton shaking hands with America’s 35th president. It was a huge moment positioning him as a rightful heir to the leadership of the party and the country.
But today’s Democratic Party is remarkably disciplined and very orderly. The party has proven to be bigger than any one individual.
This convention in Chicago is showcasing this institutional strength and discipline. Every living president is speaking or represented (Jimmy Carter’s grandson is speaking in place of his ailing grandfather). In fact, each night features a different president: Joe Biden on Monday, Barack Obama on Tuesday and Clinton on Wednesday — and perhaps a future president on Thursday, with Harris.
Contrast that to the Republicans. A Bush hasn’t spoken at a GOP convention since 2012. Before that, a Bush family member had spoken at every Republican convention but one since 1956.
To Trump’s credit in 2016, he did make time to honor “Mr. Republican” Dole at his convention, but only after Dole pledged to support him. Trump holds very little reverence for the GOP’s past. He has actually said he believes he’s more popular and more influential than Abraham Lincoln, the party’s first president — and if that’s his mindset, why would he want to glorify the past accomplishments of either a Bush or a Reagan? “The party of Lincoln” isn’t a phrase Trump wants to hear uttered. He’d prefer “the party of Trump.”
And that’s the irony here. Now, it’s the GOP searching for its cult of personality to be its next savior (if Trump proves to fail at being the savior this cycle). It’s the role Democrats were in for much of the ’70s, ’80s and even the first decade of the ’00s, until Obama came along.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has coalesced around candidates early and quickly two elections in a row now. In 2020, right after Biden won his first primary, the party’s elites quickly rallied around him in an effort to stop the primary campaign and prevent a long, drawn-out fight with the progressive wing’s champion of that moment, Bernie Sanders.
And, just 29 days ago, the party did it again, quickly rallying around Harris and drowning out any potential major dissent after Biden stepped aside, all in the name of defeating Trump.
Now, is this a party strength or a sign of candidate weakness? In 2020, the fact Biden needed the party to rally around him to prevent the potential nomination of Sanders was, perhaps, a sign of things to come in 2024. But he did win in 2020, and the party did have more success in passing its agenda by setting aside minor ideological differences to pursue larger goals, justifying the intervention. (Remember, that legislation was supported by both Manchin and Sanders.)
Because of that success, party leaders perhaps felt more comfortable doing it again by driving Biden out and quickly coalescing around Harris. If Harris wins, it will be interesting to see whether she can accumulate more political capital than Biden did — or whether she’ll have just as hard a time as Biden did because of the way she got her nomination. But winning solves a lot of problems and papers over lots of potential divides.
This isn’t to say there aren’t divides inside the Democratic Party, and those divides could, at some point, truly cause it headaches and cost it elections. But for now, the divides are more like minor skirmishes compared to the Republicans’.
At some point, this will end for the Democrats, and the internal spats will lead them to “disarray” once again. But that moment probably won’t come again until sometime after Donald Trump leaves the political stage.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
