The Whole Is Greater Than a Single Part

I disagree rather strongly with Michael Barone’s analysis of the Democratic Party:

But what if Hillary Clinton loses? The political map in that case will look quite different, with Democratic states confined to the Northeast, West Coast and a few splotches in between. The presidential Democratic Party, like the congressional Democratic Party, will be concentrated in heavily Democratic central cities, some sympathetic suburbs and scattered university towns.

The shock for Democrats will likely to be more severe than for Republicans if Trump loses. “Imagine the best candidate in your party losing to the weakest candidate in the other party,” speculates Dan McLaughlin at nationalreview.com, “after years of telling yourself that your party had unlocked the demographic code to a permanent majority.”

Here’s the reason that I disagree: the Clintons are not the sum total of the Democratic Party. For the last thirty years they’ve made a fine art of sucking all of the air out of the room and, importantly, attracting a lot of money. Given the commitment of the present national Democratic Party to the professionalization of politics, that’s vital.

It takes a huge amount of money to run a national or statewide campaign these days and it’s a finite resource. If all of the money floats your way it naturally discourages potential competitors. And that’s what’s happened with the Democratic Party.

There are tens of thousands of elected officials who are Democrats and who knows how many of those candidates would be much better known nationally if it weren’t for the Clintons? Of major U. S. cities only a relative handful—Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Fresno, Jacksonville (Florida), Mesa, Miami, Oklahoma City, Omaha, San Diego, Tulsa, Virginia Beach, and Wichita—have Republican mayors. Even in solidly Red Texas no major city has a Republican mayor.

So don’t worry about the Democratic Party if Hillary Clinton loses. It’ll be fine. It might well free the party.