Today I'm talking with Jo Freeman: a founding member of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s, a civil rights campaigner, and later a political scientist. She’s not the most typical guest we’ve ever had on Statecraft, to put it lightly. But I was reading an essay by my friend , and in it, he discusses two papers Freeman wrote about the structure of America’s political parties. The ideas in the papers stuck with me when I read them, and months later I realized that Freeman is still active. We connected on a call earlier this month.
Here’s Tanner’s essay, which I highly recommend:
Freeman has attended every Democratic party convention since 1964 (and almost every Republican convention). Her work looks at how the two parties actually work — not just what they believe, but how they operate as organizations. I found her approach incredibly useful for understanding the 2024 presidential race, and why the parties operate the way they do today.
In this conversation, we dig into:
Why do the two parties fight so differently?
What makes someone powerful in each party?
How did the women's movement transform the Democratic Party?
What happened to convention caucuses? Did they stop mattering?
What does it mean when a movement starts "trashing" its own leaders?
Thanks to Rita Sokolova for her judicious transcript edits.
Jo, you’ve written two papers on the political organization of the two parties, “Who You Know Versus Who You Represent: Feminist Influence in the Democratic and Republican Parties,” and “The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties.”
What were you up to in the late ‘80s when you wrote those two papers?
I've been thinking about the political cultures of the two parties for a very long time. I've been to every Democratic convention since ‘64 and every Republican convention since ‘76. I've been particularly focused on what women were doing within the two parties, although I'll admit that in ‘64 they weren't really doing very much. In ‘76, they both were doing a lot, but they were doing it differently.
Because I saw feminists do things differently in the different parties, I began to ask myself, “Why?” The answer I came up with is that the environments they were working in were very different. We tend to think that if you’ve seen one political party, you've seen them all, but that's simply not true. Party cultures differ just as societies do, and if you're going to be active in one, it helps to know what the culture is.
In that second paper, you wrote:
"There are two fundamental differences between the parties in which all others are rooted. The first one is structural: In the Democratic Party power flows upward and in the Republican Party power flows downward. The second is attitudinal: Republicans perceive themselves as insiders even when they are out of power and Democrats perceive themselves as outsiders even when they are in power."
Tell me more about what those fundamental differences mean.
The Democratic Party is composed of constituent groups, and it has pretty much always been that way, long before feminism or anything else. Therefore, exercising power within the Democratic Party involves being able to say that you accurately reflect the interests of a particular group. Those groups can be organized or they can just be ideational groups, but to be listened to, you need to be able to say, “I represent X” — “I represent black women,” or “I represent Jews,” or “I'm speaking for the people of South Carolina.” It has to be some sort of unit.
The Republican Party flows downward; it's having personal connections that counts. You could see that in the last year — those who claimed to have a personal connection to Donald Trump were paid more attention than those who didn't. In previous years, it would have been a different set of connections to a different person or people, but right now it's Donald Trump; if Donald Trump wants to say bad things about you, your influence just disappears. And that's because people in the party listen to what the top is saying rather than the other way around.
It seems straightforwardly true that the GOP is dominated by a single person today, but I think we tend to take Trump as a sui generis case. What's an example of that orientation from a previous era of American politics?
Let me give you an example from the ‘60s. Goldwater won the Republican nomination in 1964. He was not favored by everyone in the party, but he won the nomination. Phyllis Schlafly, whom we often think of as the organizer of the opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, gained her influence because of her relationship with Goldwater. If not for that relationship, it's highly unlikely that she would have risen to the top of her own group.
I'm curious about the second difference you mentioned as well, that Republicans perceive themselves as insiders even when they're out, and Democrats perceive themselves as outsiders even when they're in.
This has a lot to do with the social basis of the parties, which does change over time. The social basis today is not entirely the same as it was 60, 70, 80 years ago. The Democratic Party has generally been composed of people who do not view themselves as elites. As it becomes the party of the educated middle and upper classes, it looks less and less like that.
Republican Party members, on the other hand, do view themselves as a party of elites. Today, to some extent, it's aspirational — people they want to be like, rather than people they actually are. But traditionally, they tended to be the people of the upper middle and upper classes. The Republican Party still has an awful lot of upper class people in it, whereas the Democrats tend to be people who are socially upwardly mobile, but not already at the top of the social hierarchy. Again, the social basis is changing, so what I was saying is not 100% true anymore.
In one of your papers, you talk about the makeup of the Democratic coalition. You note that some groups, like black and labor interests, had been recognized parts of the coalition since the New Deal, while others, like women and gays, were relatively new participants. How did the women's liberation movement become a central part of the coalition?
The key event was the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Now, it's not that women hadn't been a recognized part — there had long been a women's division of the Democratic Party, just like there was a women's division of the Republican Party. The women’s division of the Democratic Party saw its primary goal as organizing women into the party, and you can trace its origins back to the 1930s.
The women's liberation movement emerged in the late 1960s, early 1970s. While it recognized that it was more likely to find compatibility with the Democratic Party, it didn't see it as necessarily reflecting its interests. At the 1976 Democratic Convention, feminists organized a women's caucus to compel Carter, who everyone knew was going to be the nominee, to support the Equal Rights Amendment. The caucus also wanted to change Democratic Party rules to require that all the delegates be equally split between men and women. They had a major meeting that went on for parts of the entire convention — the conventions generally meet at night, but the meetings take place during the day. Officially, they lost, but they gained clout and showed that they represented a significant number of Democrats, even if mostly women, and that therefore, given the culture of the Democratic Party, they needed to be heard. Carter never really supported the Equal Rights Amendment, but when the convention reconvened in 1980, the delegates were equally split. So even though the rule had been rejected in the public eye, the rules had been changed informally. 1976 was probably the peak of the women's liberation or feminist movement in this country at that time. It wasn't quite as strong in 1980, but its influence was greater because it had demonstrated its ability to mobilize people, articulate issues, and get attention.
Over time, the convention became composed of multiple caucuses. The two biggest caucuses were the Women's Caucus and the Black Caucus. In subsequent conventions, they met every morning. They once met at the same time, but then they began to alternate days — one would meet Monday and Wednesday, and the other would meet Tuesday and Thursday. By the 2024 conventions, they had multiplied — there were 33 caucuses. Some of them were called councils, but there were 33 identifiable groups. In addition to the Women's Caucus and the Black Caucus, there was now a climate caucus and a senior caucus and a rural caucus. They were no longer as popular as they had once been; whereas the early caucuses commanded attendance in the hundreds, last summer’s caucuses had dozens. But they were still there.
If you went to the Republican Convention, you did not find an equivalent to that. There were a couple of women's groups there, the National Federation of Republican Women being the most obvious. They also had Concerned Women for America, whose primary interest was evangelical Christianity and getting women to vote — vote Republican, admittedly, but to vote. There were no issue concerns. They weren't holding meetings or inviting people to debate or talk. They were holding receptions. You could be recruited, pay money, and join.
What were those caucuses doing at conventions in your early career, and what were they doing in 2024?
In the ‘70s and ‘80s, they heard speakers and they debated. They passed resolutions. They talked about what they wanted the Democratic Party to do or not do. Last summer, they heard speakers. They didn't debate. The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, probably spoke at five or six different caucuses and councils. When he went to the Seniors Council, he talked about being raised by his grandparents. When he went to the Rural Council, he talked about being raised in rural South Carolina. No one said, “Jaime Harrison, you're Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and we want the committee to do X.” None of that.
So then what was the purpose of those caucuses meeting at this summer's convention?
I really don't know. You'll have to ask the Democratic National Committee that. It had become a tradition, in part because the Democratic Party is composed of constituent groups and it’s simply the way things were done to give them space. Admittedly, by last summer the candidates had already been chosen and the platform already written — you could argue that there was nothing to debate.
Nonetheless, in some previous conventions in which the candidates were already chosen, as Carter had been in 1976, they still had debates — “What do we want Carter to do? What do we want the Democratic Party to do?” So it faded over time. They went from being caucuses to caucuses and councils; I'm not sure I can tell you the distinction between the two beyond having read it in their literature. There may be another revolutionary moment in the future, but as of 2024, the caucuses expanded and muted.
In one of your pieces, you talk about how the National Organization of Women (NOW) led a floor fight for a plank that then-President Carter strongly disliked. You wrote that they picked a fight that they knew they would lose but that it strengthened the organization long-term because they had demonstrated clout. You also mentioned that Jesse Jackson's thinly veiled threats to not support the 1984 ticket appear to have strengthened his hand within the Democratic Party. Can you explain that dynamic?
First of all, it's the National Organization for Women. That was a big debate when they named it, so I was very sensitive about that.
Anyway, both parties fight. Let's just be clear about that. Democratic fights are loud, open, and public. Republican fights are behind the scenes and quieter. Take the recent Speaker's elections in the House. We all know from lots of leaked sources about the viciousness that went on behind the scenes, but on the surface, you didn't see it. This was the Republicans fighting.
If it had been the Democrats, you'd have seen it. In the case of the Women's Caucus in 1976, the fights were loud, open, and public. And the fact that the Women's Caucus came forth with resolutions and it looked like they were going to command a majority of them gave them clout, because they could say they spoke for a major percentage of the Democrats. Republicans have a harder time doing that. They've certainly done it, but it's more behind the scenes, though just as vicious.
It's funny that you highlight this difference in styles of conflict and internal party politics. You wrote, “Democratic Party politics are open, loud, and confrontational, while those of the Republican Party are closed, quiet, and consensual.”
Many people in my generation have a reversed perception.
The Republican Party is certainly less consensual than it used to be. The Speaker race is a good example of it. Remember, I wrote that in the ‘80s.
Well, when there was an opportunity to select a new candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination last summer, that entire debate played out behind closed doors. Based on reporting, there were a few key players in the Democratic Party who weighed in, and instead of a mini primary or convention battle, it all happened sotto voce.
So it seems like there's an inversion there from the politics of the 80s.
Yes and no. The problem was time. Do you remember the date of the Trump-Biden debate?
About 120 days from the election.
The problem was time. There just wasn't enough time to do anything else.
In a piece from the late ‘80s, you describe ideological factions in the Republican Party. You write that, unlike Democratic caucuses, “Ideological factions [in the Republican Party] are also not power centers independent of their relationship to party leaders… The purpose of ideological factions — at least those that are organized — is to generate new ideas and test their appeal. Initially these new ideas are for internal consumption. Their concept of success is not winning benefits, symbolic or otherwise, for their group, so much as being able to provide overall direction to the party. If successful in attracting adherents these ideas will be adopted by the party for external appeal.”
You say that the ideological factions in the Republican Party operate differently than they do in the Democratic Party. Why aren't all ideological fights the same?
The Democratic Party operates heavily on the basis of constituency groups. They're looking for what they could get or do for their group. Ideological factions are not group-oriented in that sense. They are talking about the larger society. The standard Republican line is that lower taxes will broadly benefit society. In the ‘80s, we had what were called the “supply-siders.” The idea was that if you lower taxes, more money will be spent by private parties, which will in turn enhance the economy and therefore be good for the entire country. The data shows that that didn't happen at all. You see a similar thing happening now on the whole tax issue.
Let me change gears. You wrote an article for Ms. magazine in 1976 about getting “trashed” in the women's liberation movement. Can you explain that term for our readers?
I'll start off by saying that I don't think that trashing was invented by the women's liberation movement or by anything else individually, it's been going on forever. It takes different forms and manifests in different ways. Today, it's going on on the Internet, and the consequences are far worse. But in my day, pre-Internet, “trashing” was people talking to others about how bad a person was. Not that they said or did something wrong, just that they were a bad person. Now, they didn't say, “So-and-so is a bad person.” They would come up with various terms: “Oh, she's male-identified. She doesn't understand what it's like to be a sister.” You know, that kind of stuff and much worse. They would occasionally say something to the person’s face, but mostly behind their backs. It was always very, very personal. There would be a certain amount of shunning — people wouldn't be invited to meetings, they would be taken off the mailing list. Now it's an emailing list. They would essentially be ignored as though they didn't exist.
There was an awful lot of that going on, and it tended to fall on two types of women. The first was women who had high rates of achievement — those who were very articulate, got interviewed by the press, and wrote articles. The other group was the women who put themselves out there. There was a slogan back in the day: “Everyone wants an aggressive young man. An aggressive young woman is a bitch.” And in those days, “bitch” was a very bad thing. In some ways it operated as a method of social control for keeping women in their place, even though it was done by feminists. That was the irony of the whole thing.
How should one set up a social or political movement to prevent the constant backbiting or trashing?
I'm not sure that you can. Social movements are spontaneous and reflect, in part, the culture and the people that they emerge from. Take the civil rights movement, which had two parts.
One came out of the black church. The structure of the black church is that you have a minister, a single leader. That was Dr. King, and that's why the movement could produce a Dr. King. The other part of the civil rights movement came out of the black college, which did not produce a single leader [NB: the audio is unclear here]. The fact that the two organizations had such different structures reflected the culture and experiences of the people who formed them.
All social movements are unstable. There's no such thing as a permanent social movement. The labor movement can call itself that for decades, but it's still not a social movement. Not anymore. A social movement needs to have a combination of structure and spontaneity to allow it to progress. You can certainly have some say in how much structure, and, to a lesser extent, how much spontaneity. So I would say that if you're trying to form a movement organization, have some structure and accountability. Have some way to designate leaders or policy makers, some transparency, and a way to both put them in and take them out of power. If you don't, it's going to happen anyway and you just won’t have a say in it, as I said in “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.”
But don't expect it to be a permanent organization. It may become one, but then it’s an interest group and not a movement. That's what happened with the labor movement — it’s now labor unions that are permanent organizations. Some of them do some fine work, but that's not to delude ourselves into thinking they’re a social movement.
The feminist movement has long since ceased to be a movement. It became several things. A social movement has a combination of structure and spontaneity. Keeping those things going at the same time is the challenge.
Reading list
Who You Know Versus Who You Represent: Feminist Influence in the Democratic and Republican Parties
The Political Culture of the Democratic and Republican Parties
Why Republican Party Leaders Matter More Than Democratic Ones (by Tanner Greer)
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