Is the Democratic Party a strong party?

For years, the prevailing wisdom was that American politics embodies a perilous paradox. On the one hand, partisanship is at one of its highest levels ever: Democrats and Republicans have grown further and further apart, and voters increasingly see the other side as the enemy, not just the opposition. On the other hand, political parties themselves are weak: Politicians do what they want, with little fear of official sanction, and voters often snub the preferred candidates of party leaders. As a result, voters are in thrall to individual candidates who lack guardrails that compel them to act in the best interest of the party — or the country.

But this summer has upended this view of politics. After President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance in late June, the Democratic Party successfully maneuvered to replace him at the top of the ticket with Vice President Kamala Harris — an astounding and unprecedented muscle flex. Two months ago, when I booked my plane tickets to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, I was expecting to see a party resignedly falling in line behind an unpopular president; instead, I saw a party exalting in a blaze of energy of its own creation. As Harris officially accepted the party's nomination in front of thousands of Democratic dignitaries, not only was the crowd united behind her — most of them, in some form or another, were responsible for getting her on that stage. Now, suddenly, improbably, it's fair to ask: Are modern political parties stronger than we thought?

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In Chicago, you don't have to go far to find reminders of the days when parties reigned supreme. When the Republican National Convention gathered at the Chicago Coliseum in 1920, delegates were hopelessly divided on who would be their presidential candidate. After four rounds of voting failed to produce a nominee, a group of party bosses retired to a suite on the ninth floor of the Blackstone Hotel a few blocks north of the convention hall. They smoked cigars and deliberated late into the night, at last settling on Sen. Warren G. Harding as an acceptable compromise. Following the lead of "a group of men in a smoke-filled room," the convention chose Harding the next day.*

In 1968, antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy arrived in Chicago for the DNC having won the most primaries. But Vice President Hubert Humphrey had racked up more delegates in states that didn't hold popular votes, and he won the nomination over the objection of the more vocal liberal wing of the party — including a group of protesters who broke out of the designated protest area and were beset by police on Michigan Avenue in front of a national television audience.

That convention changed everything. Democrats caved to pressure to make the Democratic primaries more democratic, setting up the system of primaries and caucuses that we have today. Republicans soon followed suit, meaning both parties' establishments had voluntarily given up a lot of their power to pick their nominees. By 2016, the weakness of the two parties was self-evident: Despite a supermajority of Democratic politicians supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president, it took her until June to clinch the nomination against progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders. And despite widespread elite opposition to businessman Donald Trump, Republicans failed to coordinate to stop him from winning the nomination — and, eventually, remaking the party in his image.

But perhaps Democrats, at least, learned from these experiences. In 2020, Sanders emerged from the first few nominating contests as the favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination — an outcome that was unacceptable to many party elders. So they acted: House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn endorsed Biden, helping lift him to a decisive win in Clyburn's home state of South Carolina. Shortly thereafter, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden as well, consolidating the establishment vote around him. With former President Barack Obama reportedly supporting Biden behind the scenes, three former chairs of the Democratic National Committee, former presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke and powerful former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also endorsed Biden in the 72 hours between the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday. The party had coalesced and decisively swung the primaries in their preferred candidate's favor. It was the most impressive feat of party coordination in years … until this summer.

After Biden's halting, raspy performance in the June 27 presidential debate flopped with voters and shone a harsh spotlight on his advanced age (already considered one of his biggest weaknesses heading into the election), many Democratic bigwigs resolved that they needed a new candidate in order to defeat Trump. According to tracking from VoteHub, five senators and 34 representatives publicly called on Biden to drop out of the race, and countless more reportedly came out against him behind closed doors. Reportedly, Democratic heavyweights like Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer all privately lobbied for him to step aside.

Then, when Biden finally did so, the party moved decisively to avoid a messy nomination fight and coronate Harris as its new nominee. Biden dropped out at 1:46 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, July 21 and endorsed Harris 27 minutes later. By midnight, 52 percent of Democratic governors, 66 percent of Democratic senators and 73 percent of Democratic representatives had joined him in endorsing Harris. By Monday night, just over 24 hours later, she had secured the support of enough delegates to become the nominee, according to the Associated Press.

In many ways, these are clearly signs of a hale and hearty party. "As someone who thought party power was diminishing, I really discovered that in many ways, shapes and forms, this party's power is actually perhaps more significant than ever," Rep. Dean Phillips, who ran against Biden in the 2024 Democratic primaries and discovered firsthand how hard it was to swim against the tide of elite party opinion, told 538 during an interview in the convention hall. Phillips noted that, directly or indirectly, parties control candidates' ability to fundraise, access to media, "platforming" and access to state-party infrastructure. Without these things, he said, "there is no national success in American politics."

Those who study political parties were also impressed with the Democrats' ability to engineer the nominee they wanted, especially in contrast with Republicans' failure to do so in 2016. "It showed that [the Democratic Party] can coordinate," said Marquette University political science professor Julia Azari, who is also a 538 contributor. "It suggested that members of the party have some leverage or something they can bargain with. It might be, straight up, 'If we don't do this, we're going to lose.' It might be there were decisions made behind closed doors about legislative priorities or convention speaking slots. We may never know."

But Azari cautioned that this doesn't necessarily mean the parties are back to being Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. "There are some strengths and some weaknesses," she said. For example, the formal rules and structures of the parties are still weak; Democrats had to rely on informal levers of power to oust Biden from the race. All the coordination in the world couldn't have forced Biden to withdraw without his acquiescence.

And those informal levers only work when elites are united behind a singular goal. For example, it's unclear whether Democrats would have moved to replace Biden if Harris hadn't been waiting in the wings as an obvious alternative that was acceptable to virtually everyone in the party. At the DNC, that enthusiasm for Harris was palpable. I asked North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel how it compared to past conventions he had attended, and he set the bar high. "The comparison here is Obama in 2008," Nickel said. "It absolutely feels just like 2008 in terms of grassroots energy for the Harris-[Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz ticket."

By contrast, delegates were open about how lukewarm they had been on Biden as their candidate. Alex Hollis, a delegate from Oregon, told me that many of his fellow delegates "were definitely in the position of 'voting for the party' post debate, and for me, it was a feeling of sort of resigned acceptance, rather than enthusiasm for Biden."

That's another strike against the strong-party theory: Despite his apparent flaws as a candidate, party pooh-bahs deferred to their president until extremely late in the game. According to Phillips, many Democratic members of Congress had been concerned that Biden was too old to run for reelection for years. "Things really started to change — certainly for me, and for many of my colleagues — when he appeared before the Democratic caucus two times in the summer of 2021," Phillips said. "It was jarring for many of us, because we saw that decline right in front of us. … That was for many of us when we did start talking."

Phillips said that, at the time, many Democrats assumed Biden would not run for a second term. "But when he did, there were a lot of disappointed members of Congress in the Democratic caucus," he said. "But just as my Republican colleagues have kept it real quiet about their real feelings about Donald Trump, that disease seemed to be contagious, and it's because of the perverse incentives. … Nobody is rewarded for saying [Biden shouldn't run again] publicly. Nobody."

In other words, despite widespread concerns over Biden's strength as a candidate, the party didn't flex its muscles until it was absolutely necessary. And the tipping point was when party leaders became convinced after the debate that Biden could not defeat Trump, whom Democrats consider to be an existential threat. "The Democratic Party is one that understands what a true danger to democracy [Trump is]," Nickel said. "And we were able to course correct when we were confronted with a campaign that was not going to be focused on the issues."

Probably not by coincidence, this was the same thing that galvanized Democrats to rally behind Biden in 2020: They believed he was their best bet to beat Trump. So perhaps the answer is that modern parties can be strong — but only when their backs are against the wall. In Azari's words, "the party can do what it needs to do, but there are some gaps in the processes — questions about whether they can meet a wide range of situations."

Indeed, for an example of a party that is still weak, Democrats need look no further than across the aisle. Early in the 2016 Republican primaries, GOP elites unanimously opposed Trump's candidacy, but they failed to coalesce behind a single alternative, so they couldn't muster up the strength to stop him. In October 2016, at least 24 Republican representatives and 15 Republican senators called on Trump to drop out, asked him to reconsider his candidacy or said they would not support him after the "Access Hollywood" tape leaked, but Trump was obdurate and stayed in the race. In early 2021, multiple Republican members of Congress criticized Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot, but many of them soon backpedaled, and only 17 voted to impeach or convict him for it. And at the very beginning of the 2024 cycle, Trump's popularity among Republicans took a hit after his endorsed candidates underperformed in the 2022 midterms, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led him in head-to-head primary polls. But other ambitious Republicans cannibalized the anti-Trump vote by jumping into the race too, and most of the (few) remaining anti-Trump Republicans did not endorse DeSantis or another alternative. As a result, despite his persistent unpopularity, Republicans are going into their third straight presidential election with Trump as their standard-bearer.

The idea of strong political parties may be unpalatable to many voters, who have negative views of both the Democratic Party and the GOP. But political scientists argue strong parties are a good thing, both for the party itself and the principles of republican government: More so than voters, parties — which want to win elections — have an incentive to put forth candidates and platforms with broad popular appeal. After Democrats dug deep and found a new gear of party coordination to meet the moment — powerful enough to push aside an incumbent president — Republicans may be about to find out just how valuable being a strong party can be.

Footnotes

*Visitors to Chicago can stay in the very same room today — although it, like the hotel in general, is now nonsmoking.