I don’t know if the book thinks it would have been hard for them to do much better, but I certainly didn’t come away believing that that’s true, given that, once the distastrous debate had happened, it seemed like they were pulling a lot of different levers at the same time and could have been even more aggressive.
I felt like the book was just pretty slow to criticize people who failed to act, as opposed to criticizing people in the inner circle who actively made the situation worse, but I think that there was an abdication of responsibility.
I agree that senior party members didn’t have direct levers, and it wasn’t directly in their job description to assess the suitability of a candidate, and it seems like a correct update that if something isn’t literally part of someone’s job description, it is a lot less likely that they will act on it than if it is. This is why I think DRIs are a good and important concept. But I don’t agree that it wasn’t fundamentally and spiritually their job / part of overall ensuring a good future for the Democratic Party (especially given that they knew that it was not anyone else’s job more than it was their job). And while the party has little hard power, I think they have a ton of soft power. For example, they have the power to talk to donors, they have the power to coordinate Congress people, they have the power to throw support behind other candidates (and if I recall correctly, you start to see these levers get used, just way too late)
I don’t know if the book thinks it would have been hard for them to do much better, but I certainly didn’t come away believing that that’s true, given that, once the distastrous debate had happened, it seemed like they were pulling a lot of different levers at the same time and could have been even more aggressive.
I felt like the book was just pretty slow to criticize people who failed to act, as opposed to criticizing people in the inner circle who actively made the situation worse, but I think that there was an abdication of responsibility.
I agree that senior party members didn’t have direct levers, and it wasn’t directly in their job description to assess the suitability of a candidate, and it seems like a correct update that if something isn’t literally part of someone’s job description, it is a lot less likely that they will act on it than if it is. This is why I think DRIs are a good and important concept. But I don’t agree that it wasn’t fundamentally and spiritually their job / part of overall ensuring a good future for the Democratic Party (especially given that they knew that it was not anyone else’s job more than it was their job). And while the party has little hard power, I think they have a ton of soft power. For example, they have the power to talk to donors, they have the power to coordinate Congress people, they have the power to throw support behind other candidates (and if I recall correctly, you start to see these levers get used, just way too late)