WASHINGTON _ Ben Wikler possesses a true rarity in American politics: An honest-to-goodness positive story about the Democratic National Committee.
The chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party said after he was elected in June, senior DNC staff immediately arranged a presentation that explained the basics of his new job, like building a voter-outreach program. This may seem standard, but the aid surprised Wikler, a former Washington-based activist who had learned to never expect much from the committee _ and came as a relief given his state's importance in the 2020 election.
"I have been very pleasantly surprised," Wikler said. "I came with a heavy dose of skepticism because the DNC hasn't always worked in a tremendous partnership for state parties. But I'm four months in, and it's been great."
The DNC, an entity that exists to work hand-in-hand with the party's presidential nominee, has been maligned by Democrats for a decade as both useless and contemptuous _ criticism that reached an ugly crescendo during the last presidential campaign when the organization effectively fell apart and was accused by Bernie Sanders supporters of rigging the primary.
But with less than seven months before the next Democratic nominee officially emerges, some members of the party say the DNC has come a long way since 2016.
They might have a point.
Senior officials at the DNC, many of whom agreed to interviews with McClatchy in an effort to prove the efficacy of their operations, argued that the organization has engineered a turnaround on everything from voter data and field programs, to volunteer training, and even the management of the primaries themselves.
"We're far better off than we were 2 { years ago," said DNC chairman Tom Perez, during an interview at the committee's Washington headquarters. "I think we have a lot more work to do, but I enter the 2020 cycle with optimism that we can get it done."
Even some Democrats independent of the DNC share Perez's optimism: In interviews, dozens of state Democratic leaders, current DNC members, former DNC staffers and other veteran party operatives contend the committee's political operation is much better able to help than it has been in recent presidential elections.
Of course, even if there's widespread agreement that the DNC is in better shape, some watching the committee still harbor lingering doubts it's come far enough. And indeed, the DNC faces a set of looming challenges on everything from its convention, staffing, and _ most of all _ its fundraising.
The task ahead of it is gargantuan: One senior Democratic strategist tracking 2020 estimates President Donald Trump's campaign and allies could spend as much as $260 million on the election before Democrats even reach their July convention, a sum the strategist and others fear could capsize the nominee's fledgling campaign when it's least able to defend itself.
Democrats largely agree the DNC has improved. But has it improved enough?
"I've got nothing but praise for the progress the DNC has made under current leadership, from what it inherited," said Mo Elleithee, a former communications director at the DNC. "It is admittedly a low bar."
GETTING A HEAD START
The DNC has a plan to prepare for 2020: turning staffers into temporary real estate agents.
The committee has already scoured swing states for office space for the eventual nominee, in hopes of getting a head start on the general election, Perez said.
"In a number of key battleground states, (Clinton) lost eight weeks of time because they hadn't identified locations for field offices," Perez said. "So when I talk about what we are doing, we're down to the minutiae of, here is an ideal location for a field office and we've talked with the landlord."
Such an effort might seem hopelessly small-bore to critics. But DNC officials say it typifies their approach to 2020, one that emphasizes building political infrastructure over flashy confrontations with Trump.
It's the sort of apparatus critics said the DNC didn't build in 2016, when a severely underfunded committee did little to reach out to voters, staff up in battleground states, or even maintain a working voter data system. As Hillary Clinton put it, after becoming the nominee, she inherited "nothing" from the DNC.
"What is the baseline infrastructure investment we can make right now that will benefit whoever the nominee is?" said Sam Cornale, the DNC's deputy CEO. "So we're not making strategic decisions. We're not saying here's your path to 270. What we're saying is we're going to build infrastructure and protect as many of those paths as possible."
This time, committee officials said they are hiring staff and training volunteers in key states, revamping its voter data files, and preparing an opposition research dossier on Trump _ all of which the party's nominee can instantly inherit.
The committee also started a program this year called Organizing Corps 2020, a program that focused on voter outreach in urban areas in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Voter-outreach efforts are nothing new, but local Democrats say the initiative to train a group of volunteers _ most of whom were young, non-white, and from the communities where they were knocking on doors _ a year ahead of time was more important.
According to Michigan Democratic Party Chairwoman Lavora Barnes, it was the kind of effort that was usually left for the summer of the election year, at a time when it was difficult to find and train enough qualified volunteer leaders. Instead, her state party and others in battleground areas start the 2020 election ahead of schedule.
"I can tell you, what we're seeing from the DNC now is night and day compared to where we were at this point in 2016 cycle," Barnes said. "Night and day."
Adds Perez: "In 2015, no disrespect to the party chair back then, but it was probably close to 2,000 doors. This year it's 200,000 doors, in the year before the election."
Perez says the work "isn't sexy," but to some presidential campaign veterans, it's exactly the right approach.
"It's not the DNC's job to be rushing out there right now and be persuading people to vote one way or another," said Robby Mook, who ran Clinton's 2016 campaign. "It's the DNC's job to mobilize the Democratic Party to best support that nominee when she or he emerges."
The DNC shouldn't craft a message to combat Trump or develop an overarching strategy for the election, Mook argued, because the nominee will do that. And super PACs, which are less limited by campaign finance regulations, are better suited for funding major ad campaigns.
But Mook said the DNC is the only organization that can build infrastructure for the nominee that will transition to the general election.
"The primary process ends, and you need to very quickly go from having 500 staff to 5,000 staff," Mook said. "And just from a pure organizational standpoint, it is really difficult to go from 500 to 5,000 in two months. So the DNC needs to do everything it can to step in and expedite that process as smoothly as possible."
PRIMARY CONCERNS
Even in politics, it's rare to be publicly labeled as "useless as tits on a boar hog." But that's what former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian called Perez in a Politico story in October, amid a swirl of criticism the DNC hadn't done enough to defend Joe Biden from Trump's accusations he had tried to shut down anti-corruption investigations in Ukraine.
To Perez, the insult comes with the territory of running the DNC.
"Dick Harpootlian is a strong supporter of Joe Biden," Perez said. "I have great respect for Joe Biden, but Dick Harpootlian wanted us to spend seven figures buying ads on behalf of Joe Biden."
Perez said Harpootlian hasn't considered the consequences of his request in a primary where the DNC must stay neutral.
"Mr. Harpootlian might want to study 2016 and the lessons from 2016," he said.
Perez's response is emblematic of the mindset of DNC officials managing the presidential primary: Retain the appearance of neutrality at all costs, even in the face of constant criticism.
In other words, avoid the mistakes that crippled the committee in 2016, when Sanders supporters believed it had tilted the playing field in favor of Clinton, an inter-party rift that lasted through November and beyond.
It's why the committee fended off persistent calls for a climate change debate, why it's stuck to a rigid set of debate qualifications standards, and why it declined to mount a campaign specifically defending Biden (although DNC officials are quick to point out they have consistently called the president a liar over the accusations).
"Our job is to build infrastructure and to build trust," Perez said.
The DNC appears to have made inroads with former critics. Sanders himself has praised the committee's decision to reduce the influence of superdelegates, and officials with his campaign have declined to criticize the primary process this time around.
DNC officials also like to point out that in public appearances, Perez is usually well-received by rank-and-file party members. At a September gathering of Democrats in New Hampshire, for instance, Perez received applause throughout his speech; at the same event four years earlier, then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was heckled by Sanders supporters.
The DNC's positions also earn some grudging respect among some neutral observers. Former DNC vice chairman R.T. Rybak said he didn't think defending Biden was the DNC's job.
"I don't think a specific defense of Joe Biden would be the party's work," Rybak said. "I think the party was right on that. Joe Biden needs to defend Joe Biden. The DNC should be focused on distilling and framing the message about why Trump's actions have been grossly corrupt."
Still, Perez has disappointed some Democrats during the primary, particularly over a set of debate qualifications that critics say boxed out governors who didn't start with a national profile, rewarded billionaires who can buy their way onto the debate stage, and _ more recently _ has pushed out some nonwhite candidates.
And other dangers loom at the end of the primary process. The decision to raise corporate money for the Democratic National Convention, slated for mid-July in Milwaukee, has drawn the ire of the Sanders campaign in particular. (Elizabeth Warren's campaign has also said the convention should not be funded with corporate cash.)
Officials with the campaign say that decision should be reversed.
"When Bernie is the nominee, everything will fundamentally change for corporate elites," said Josh Orton, policy director for the Sanders campaign. "Bernie Sanders fights for the people, cannot be bought, and is under no obligation to provide VIP treatment to corporations like Bank of America and Chevron, who try to corrupt our elections and government. A Bernie Sanders convention will be a people-powered convention."
Convention officials said they aren't changing course.
"Our focus is getting the Convention appropriately funded and paid for well in advance so that we can deliver a safe and successful Convention that puts our nominee in the best position to beat Donald Trump in 2020," Joe Solmonese, the convention's CEO, said in an email.
FINANCIAL TROUBLES
Even Democrats who are near-effusive about the DNC's progress express one deep reservation: money.
Many Democrats say their biggest worry next year is the sheer amount of cash Trump's operation can spend against his opponent when they emerge in the spring or early summer, lacking the resources and infrastructure to adequately respond.
In October alone, the Republican National Committee nearly tripled the DNC's fundraising, $25.3 million to $9 million, according to the latest reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Overall, the RNC has more than $60 million on hand, compared to just $10 million for the DNC.
"That is one gigantic warning sign that is flashing out there for us," said Terry McAuliffe, the former DNC chairman and former governor of Virginia. "It's that amount of money. They can fool a lot of people with it."
To critics, saying that a political committee is doing well without raising a lot of money is a little like saying a basketball team is playing well but not winning a lot of games.
"Hiring organizers is great," said one senior Democratic strategist. "But if your fundraising sucks, and so you're hiring 10 organizers instead of a 100, you're not doing everything you could."
Especially galling, even to some DNC members, is that the DNC's fundraising has continued to lag amid the so-called "green wave" since Trump's election that helped many Democratic House and Senate candidates raise record sums of cash in 2018.
"There's a general sense of concern about the level of fundraising at the DNC," said one longtime DNC member, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. "And with the other committees bringing in record numbers of cash, it's difficult for folks to understand why the DNC is still struggling."
Explanations for the struggles are myriad. Some Democrats point to Perez's unfamiliarity with high-dollar Democratic donors (he's never run a major statewide or federal campaign himself), lingering confusion over the DNC's role, and an ongoing primary that is hoovering up cash.
Democrats also say that, like a lot of issues with the DNC, it is simply trying to recover from the damage done in 2016.
"The DNC is set up to fail with the grassroots," said one digital Democratic strategist not affiliated with the committee. "Bernie made them a villain and they're viewed as The Killer Of Good Things and the Vanguard Of The Establishment (even if that's not true.) Just a really tough environment to raise online with."
DNC officials retort that their fundraising is setting internal records: They've raised about $25 million more at this point in the election cycle than their predecessors did in 2015, $76 million to $51 million. In the same time frame, digital fundraising has spiked 49%.
"When Tom Perez walked in this building, an average conversation with a donor on the phone was about 90 minutes," said Cornale, the deputy CEO. "This building had not raised major donor money, had not had its own major fundraising program since June of 2016. "We walked in at the end of February of '17, that's almost a year of atrophy of not just the program but of those relationships."
Cornale added that the committee's fundraising hasn't prevented it from making investments in necessary infrastructure, like a multimillion-dollar overhaul of the party's voter-data program or increasing the money sent to state parties by one-third.
To Perez, money isn't a guarantee of success.
"In 2006, we got outraised at the DNC by 2-to-1," the chairman said. "And what happened in 2006? We took over the House, took over the Senate.
"In 2010, we outraised them, and we kind of got our butts kicked."
ONLY ONE WAY OUT
The financial disadvantage isn't so easily dismissed by other Democrats, even those who say the committee has otherwise improved.
"I'd say the DNC's better," said Jess Morales Rocketto, a veteran Democratic operative. "It's wholly inadequate to the task, but it's better."
For his part, Perez mostly dismisses the criticism, although he acknowledges the DNC might benefit if it explained what it's doing more "conspicuously."
"This isn't the sexiest job I've ever had, and I knew that going in," Perez said, one of several times he described his job in relatively mundane terms. "The success of the DNC is building infrastructure that enables us to win elections on scale."
Perez's supporters say there's only one way to guarantee that everyone comes to see the DNC's efforts as success: win in 2020.
"We're going to win the White House, and Tom will be a hero in two years," McAuliffe said. "But until you get to that point, everybody's gotta gripe. And if you gotta blame someone, they're the easiest to blame."
