Election fever spurs top-down party unity

So-called “party unity” — resulting from top-down control — looks for the moment as solid as ever in the U.S. in the run-up to next year’s national elections. 

Right now, President Joe Biden seems to hold firm operational control of the Democratic Party. And despite the crimes he's now charged with, former President Donald Trump remains at the top of the Republican Party.

That’s to be expected when an incumbent president and his defeated predecessor are considered front-runners for their nominations — and lead millions of voters to believe that their loss could sink the whole republic.

For its part, the Biden campaign seems to be using the Democratic National Committee as its operations center for 2024, in tandem with state party organizations and outside groups, much as Trump did in 2016 once he established power.

The reelection campaign looks like a skeletal operation while strategists seek to take tactical advantage of a 2014 Supreme Court ruling effectively relaxing donation limits to parties from wealthy individuals. The DNC's planning presumes Biden will be nominated. “The DNC is not something separate,” The Washington Post quoted a Biden adviser as saying. “It’s the president’s DNC, the president’s [fundraising] list, the president’s people.”

From his side, Trump's chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is still in charge of the Republican National Committee, and some state organizations across the country have been acting to give him an edge in the primaries.

In Michigan, a rule change that would favor Trump over primary rivals is already in the works. That state’s GOP officials quietly passed a "resolution of intent" to allocate only 16 of 55 delegates based on primary night results. The other 39 would be chosen through caucuses four days later, as reported by ABC News. Most delegates would thus be selected by caucusgoers assumed friendly to Trump. 

“We worked with the entire RNC team, RNC legal, so this was not some cockamamie plan that we just came up with on our own," state party chair Kristina Karamo told the network. Trump also expects to benefit from a new rule change announced just this week that awards all of California's 169 delegates to the majority winner of the March 5 primary vote. 

So far Trump has gleaned unheard-of personal benefits from a presidential-level fundraising operation. His political action committee has spent nearly $40 million on legal fees in the first half of the year to defend him and his advisers. The party, the candidate, and the criminal defendant are thus fused into a single political entity.

New York has a big role in the unified-party drama. Under Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic Party here has blended into the goals and strategies of the national organization. One example is the ongoing effort to redo a congressional redistricting that helped give Republicans 11 of the blue state's 26 seats.

For 2024, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the House Democratic minority, has been visibly coordinating efforts in his home state for what he calls an “all hands on deck moment.” For Jeffries, nothing less than the speakership could be at stake.

The war within our national party duopoly undermines cooperation and at times grinds public governance to a halt. But top leaders of both parties stand to gain a privilege enjoyed by generals — urgent deference from the party rank-and-file. Nobody knows how long this kind of "wartime" leadership will be acceptable to party members — or how soon the big players might change.

Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.

By Dan Janison

dan.janison@newsday.comDanJanison

Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.