President Joe Biden is staking his reelection bid on the political and financial muscle of the Democratic National Committee. As it prepares for a bruising 2024 contest, his campaign plans to raise and spend around $2 billion. But it will do so in coordination with the national and state Democratic parties, in an effort to establish a coordinated campaign around the country. The idea is to bolster field, volunteer and data organizations, and ensure they work jointly to promote Biden and down-ballot Democratic candidates. “The president is really rewriting the playbook when it comes to what a reelection campaign looks like and how we are in deep partnership with the DNC,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, “and will continue to show, by all metrics, that we’re running a successful campaign.” The strategy is different from the way the last Democratic president treated the DNC. Barack Obama largely shunned the party’s traditional fundraising apparatus and instead raised money with his own groups, relying on personal star power. That helped leave the DNC depleted and in debt. What Rodriguez called a “one-team, one-fight mentality” allows Democrats to raise money faster than Biden’s campaign can itself, while letting the reelection effort keep its staffing and logistical expenses low as it relies on state and national parties to cover costs. The party says the plan lets it remain unified politically and financially behind Biden, while Republican presidential candidates are locked in a contentious primary. But President Donald Trump avoided serious primary challengers and teamed with the Republican National Committee to take in more than $1 billion in 2020, without winning reelection. The Democrats’ model also requires Biden’s 2024 campaign to lean more heavily on parties in major states where Republicans have dominated recent elections. Rodriguez, though, pointed to Democrats’ success in last year’s midterm races, when the DNC spent $95 million on campaigns across the country and helped the party’s candidates defy historical precedent by maintaining control of the Senate and only narrowly losing the House. The amount spent was more than double the committee’s previous midterm cycle record of $42 million ahead of the 2010 race. Biden’s 2020 campaign gave the national party its supporter and fundraising data after Inauguration Day in 2021. And the DNC says it has since expanded the volunteer list to 250,000 in all 50 states. Rodriguez said the committee is now building and testing new precision online targeting tools to better reach voters on social media, especially young ones and those of color. The DNC also has developed systems allowing its volunteers to share localized content to bolster phone banking and texting to voters, and created “relational organizing” to help existing volunteers potentially organize people closest to them. Sam Cornale, the DNC’s executive director, said that national and state parties will be able to hire organizers, recruit volunteers and talk to voters “as close to year-round and every day as resources allow.” “As we are scaling this effort, you will see state party payrolls increase dramatically,” Cornale said. Fundraising is also easier since the DNC and the president’s affiliated fundraising arm, the Biden Victory Fund, can raise roughly $1 million annually from individual donors. Biden’s reelection campaign itself can only collect $6,600 per donor, per year. “The work that we know needs to happen, the broad […]

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