"I'm not the man! I just have duopoly of politics in the world's most powerful country."
What's the DNC and Why Are Grassroots Movements Important?
| The Democratic National Committee is the fundraising and campaigning arm of the US Democratic Party; they are the Democratic Party Organization. Importantly, they are national: they are not the same thing as local or state parties; while party organizations exist at all levels, and are interconnected, they operate distinctly from each other.
"A Grassroots movement" is, very simply, "one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement." Wikipedia goes on: they "use collective action from the local level to effect change at the local, regional, national or international level."
So....?
The DNC is not a grassroots movement, despite its connection with local party organizations, and never will be. Since Citizens United in 2010, the fundraising and campaigning done by the DNC is not even generally focused around individual people or local support groups, it's based around PACs and Super PACs. Yet, repeatedly, their website directly uses the words "grassroots movement" and focuses on the idea that the DNC is people-driven. As any political party DOES need individual support to functoin, this is true. But the impact of individuals and local movements is outsized on their website. If you visit their "who we are" page, the most pronounced links are to state-level political parties and College Democrats. Like I've said, the DNC and the national phenomena of Democrats are related, but they are not one in the same. Party in the electorate does not immediately equate to party organization. There is a reason they're taught as distinct from one another in POLS 1101!
Why is This Significant?
It's scammy and disingenuous for a national-level political organization dependent on funding from dark money groups (501c4s specifically) to convey themselves as anything else. It's manipulative of the electorate and likely gives people a poor cursory understanding of how politics and political parties interact. As most people are not very politically intelligent, this seems particularly dangerous. Neither the DNC nor the GOP exist without the people, but to say that "the people" are solely responsible for the party's success is irresponsible. The DNC's website should do a better job at acknowledging their status as a national organization, instead of cosplaying as other types of political groups to gain favor with the uneducated.
AM
That is a great observation, Ayla. Aside from the bottom-up definition of grassroots, Dictionary.com’s definition of grassroots adds: the common or ordinary people, especially as contrasted with the leadership or elite of a political party, social organization, etc. the rank and file. To further validate your observation, I would say that common does not mean rich. However, as reported in “Have Democrats Become the Party of the Rich?” in the left- leaning The Nation, 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts and 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,00 per year. Additionally, the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress. These facts came from Internal Revenue Service data. The article goes on to portray examples of prominent Democrats’ elitist behavior. This information was not what I, and probably many others, believed.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thenation.com/article/society/democrats-rich-party-obama/