The Democratic Party's greatest strength, and often its greatest weakness, is the vast diversity of views and experiences it encompasses. This becomes a weakness when the party tries to present a consistent, unified message and strategy that simultaneously reflects its diversity. The inevitable result of trying to cater to everyone's views at once is an amorphous, insipid identity that doesn't really satisfy or inspire anyone.
But the Democratic Party doesn't have to maintain a single, monolithic identity in order to be a viable political force. It needs to transform its structure to support a multiplicity of identities: It can become a virtual "super-party" by providing a framework within which semi-autonomous "factions" could coexist without spoiling each other's campaigns or compromising their ideals.
Here's how it could work:
The party would institute the formation of official Democratic factions (e.g., Progressive Democrats, Moderate Democrats, Southern Democrats, etc.), each of which would have its own platform, chairman, national committee, and independent fundraising apparatus.
All Democratic primary candidates would declare their faction affiliation before the primaries; whoever won the primary would be the official Democratic nominee for that race in the general election, but would be supported by funds from their own faction.
For presidential races, each faction would select its nominee in a "pre-primary"; the two factional nominees with the most votes in the primaries would be the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees. A multi-faction coordinating committee would handle presidential campaigns and general Democratic ad campaigns.
The benefits:
- Diversification of strategies. Each faction could tailor its message and candidates to a different constituency. Moderate or conservative Democrats could run as such in red states, without looking like hypocrites by disavowing the views of their own party. Conversely, blue-state liberal Democrats could push for strongly progressive programs without worrying about damaging their red state colleagues through guilt by association. Factions could experiment with new strategies without the party as a whole having to risk departing from established formulas.
- Attracting third-party voters--or entire third parties. The Green Party, for instance, could exist within the Democratic Party with its own platform, leadership, candidates, and funds. Green Party supporters would never have to worry about throwing a race to the Republicans, and Green candidates who won in the primaries wouldn't have to face other Democrats in the general election. The Democratic party would essentially become a multi-party coalition in a single party wrapper.
- Political theater. An open Presidential primary usually gives a boost in popularity to the party involved, as media attention is focused on the diversity of opinions and personalities of the candidates. The existence of permanent Democratic factions would spread this attention throughout the cycle. And political forums and debates would have to include not just a Republican and a Democratic representative, but representatives from every major Democratic faction. The Democrats could easily dominate the discussions, sidelining the Republicans.
- Damage control. A multi-faction party would be a lot more resistant to negative attacks; it would be hard to tar the entire party with the same brush. And scandals could be more easily contained to a single faction, without bringing down Democrats across the board. Our eggs would never all be in the same basket.