There has been non-stop coverage of President Biden’s frailties since the debate fiasco, examining the motives, actions, and opinions of Biden, people in his inner circle, party operatives, and donors. I’ve started trying to understand, instead, what the Democratic Party elite is up to. Collective agents are largely ignored in our obsession with individuals.
An ogregore is the intelligent group agent that results from people organizing into a collective. Organizations aren’t necessarily ogregores, but when are, the collective entity can act in ways that the individuals that make it up don’t intend or agree with.
While I don’t think the Democratic Party acts coherently enough to be an ogregore, the elite core of party meets the “catnet” criteria (category+network; see my Is crypto an orgregore?). The distinguishing characteristic that constitutes the category is membership of the Democratic Party; the network is the two-way social ties connecting the members of the elite. [1]
The party elite includes Biden, his advisers, party operatives, elected officials, and donors. Some members of the network, like the press, are not party members and so not part of the catnet.
However, the existence of a catnet isn’t sufficient for being an ogregore. I’ve speculated that one also needs agency (i.e., the entity is differentiated, autonomous, interactive, and adaptive), with discernible actions and outcomes. If Biden steps back, it’s evidence that the Democratic Party elite has some agency, and thus is an ogregore—even more so if the elite then come up with a process for identifying a new candidate.
The Trump assassination attempt happened while drafting this post. It’ll be interesting (as in, “May you live in interesting times”) to see what happens next. I expect there will be a lot of talk about Donald Trump’s base; the Trump/MAGA movement, if you will. I don’t think the “base” is an ogregore since not everyone has two-way ties. There isn’t much evidence of a GOP elite acting with enough coherence to count as an ogregore. On the Right, then, we have a charismatic leader and an enthusiastic audience—no ogregore in sight.
Update 24 July, 2024
Did the party elite ogregore do for Joe Biden? I believe so. It certainly wasn’t a “democratic” decision in any way (though neither was his ascension in a primary process carefully managed by the Party).
The president took the decision to leave, of course. However, he would not have done so without significant, coordinated pressure from party grandees, that is, from the elite ogregore. Neither polling showing voters felt Biden was too old nor his debate performance were sufficient, since they were in place months and weeks before his decision to withdraw.
Reporting suggests that three key factors were donors, defections and the dons; that is, the money drying up; increasing numbers of Congresspeople finding the courage (or more likely, fear of losing power) to call on him to leave; and senior party figures like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries increasing their pressure. (We’ll have to wait for the history to be written to see the evidence, but I bet it’ll be framed in terms of the personalities rather than the system dynamics. Even with history in hand, one will still have to infer the ogregore.)
The donors, defectors and dons were certainly talking to each, so a cat-net was in place. There was collective intent—the desire not to lose political power. The defectors were the ones in marginal seats most likely to lose their jobs in an election with apathetic Democrat voters. However, I suspect what really brought things to a head was the prospect of Dems losing control of the Senate and being swamped in the House—something that affected the power of all Dem members.
One of the marks of a group agent is that its actions don’t reflect the wishes of all its members. That was the case here. There was a group of Democrats, elites and party members generally, who supported Biden all the way to the end. However, the desire of the collective to gain/maintain power overcame the desires of Biden enthusiasts.
[1] Membership of the party is a necessary but sufficient condition; two-ties are also necessary. It’s not necessary that everyone has a two-way tie to everyone else, just that every member is connected to at least one other member with a two-way tie.
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