A first-timer's experience at the DNC
Now I know who the Democrats are, and I am one of them.
Recently I participated for the first time in a Democratic National Committee meeting, and it was a big one. We elected all new leadership: chair, vice chairs, treasurer, and finance chair.
In the weeks leading up to the election, I and my three fellow committee members were inundated with emails, texts, and phone calls from dozens of candidates running for these positions. It was like the November general election season all over again. On the Saturday we voted in the DC area, my husband texted me photos of postcards from candidates that arrived for me at home in Vermont that same day.
Several people have asked me whether I had fun at the DNC meeting, and I can honestly say I did. Three days of speeches, candidate forums, and networking is probably torture for most people, but hey, to each her own. The best part was getting an inside look at how the Democratic machine actually works.
Turns out, it’s a lot like a city council meeting, complete with a 15-minute debate on whether to allow four additional candidates to have 30 seconds each to make speeches. You can’t make this stuff up.
The parliamentary procedures were interspersed with constant networking and politicking. I was skeptical when I was told I wouldn’t have to spend any money on meals, but all I bought for myself was two London Fogs that the kind baristas at the in-hotel Starbucks said they didn’t normally make but they would for me. Free breakfast was available every morning courtesy of any number of candidates. We were treated to restaurant lunches by hopeful vendors looking to build relationships. Young staffers I saw at evening parties got more and more rumpled each morning after staying up almost all night.
And the swag! Having been to all sorts of different conventions in my life, I have finally learned to restrain myself and not take all the tchotchkes. I returned home with a few buttons and one canvas bag that had “It’s about kitchen table issues” printed on it—even though how I got it was kind of creepy. My roommate and I awoke one morning to find two of these bags on our doorknob. Note to candidates: don’t secretly find out where your women delegates are sleeping and leave stuff on their door.
The race for DNC chair was hotly contested, with many candidates, three of whom were considered front runners. But only one of them hired young people wearing digital sandwich boards all over the hotel. He also brought a drum corps. I looooove a drum corps! But it didn’t make me vote for him.
I witnessed some serious whipping going on and was even subject to it myself and was also somehow recruited to whip. Teams of people roamed the convention center, tag teaming committee members to confirm which candidates they were voting for, and advocating for their candidates to the undecided. Dueling whip counts floated around all day, each candidate’s teams trying to prove their viability.
I was leaning towards a particular candidate for chair, and once the opposing team heard this, they got to work. Several people talked to me earnestly about the merits of their candidate and urged me to vote their way. They were true believers, as were the people on the side of the candidate I favored.
I knew they were playing hardball though when I saw a candidate’s staffer lead someone over to me. It wasn’t just someone—it was a high ranking, highly respected, woman elected official whom I deeply admire. She was on a mission to whip me and she meant business. I’m hoping I have a chance to actually have a normal conversation with her at the next DNC meeting.
No amount of texts or postcards can replace a good conversation with a candidate, where you can ask hard questions and get past the bullet points. I was favoring a particular candidate for one office and after I talked with him I told him he had my vote. Soon after I found myself in a text chain of about a dozen people whipping for him. So what did I do? I whipped for him too, because I really felt he was the best person for the job.
By far the hardest politicking happened during the actual voting. Over 400 DNC members sat in a huge room, cordoned off from the public and the media. We had ten rounds of voting over the course of a 12+ hour day (with no food—we had to Uber it in!). In between each voting round candidates would disperse into the DNC space, shaking hands with every member they could, asking them flat out for their vote. Deals and alliances were happening all over the place.
It was an incredibly long day. I and another team member brought knitting and you’d be amazed how many people asked us what we were doing. Kudos to whoever on the DNC staff got the brilliant idea of playing dance tunes at about hour 8. But it was organized and full of energy and purpose. Everyone knew they were participating in the most consequential DNC election in recent memory.
In the end, the team who was elected is solid. There were definitely some disappointments, and some worry about the future. I’m not really certain that Democrats as a group really understand why things went wrong in November. I also am not sure that the new team we just elected knows what we need to do going forward. I mean, I think I heard “we must meet the voters where they are” about 800 times over the course of the weekend. To quote the great Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Whatever the future holds for the Democrats, I came away with one good thing. We hear on the news “today Democrats did this” and “the Democratic Party has decided to do that.” But now I know who the Democrats are, and I am one of them. That raucous, friendly, passionate, diligent group of people from literally all over the world who came together to chart a future for our country threw themselves into the task with vigor and (mostly) discipline. This experience humanized the Democratic Party for me. And I’m glad to go forward with these humans, flawed as we all are, to fight the battles we must fight together.