Why do so many here greatly overestimate the power of DNC Chairman?

[Mr. Morden]

As far as I can tell, some actually believe that DWS tilted the 2016 nomination in some meaningful way towards Clinton, and are afraid that Perez will likewise tilt the 2020 nomination towards another "establishment" candidate.

This raises another pet peeve of mine, which is that many folks here seem to think that the national parties recruit presidential candidates, and thereby determine who runs for president in the first place.  I actually remember during primary season, someone suggested that Priebus must have recruited Fiorina to run because it would look bad for the party if there wasn't a woman in the race on the Republican side.

I'm sorry, but that's bananas.  Neither the national party committee nor party chairman "recruits" anyone to run for president.  That's not to say that there aren't gatekeepers.  There are indeed big money donors who are gatekeepers of a sort, and I presume they told Andrew Cuomo and Amy Klobuchar and whoever else that they shouldn't run in 2016 because Clinton was the anointed establishment candidate.  But those big money donors operate outside of the DNC, and they would exist regardless of what the DNC was doing.

[Mr. Morden]

On the 2016 primary debate issue, there's really nobody forcing the candidates to agree to the DNC sanctioned debates in the first place.  In 1999, Bush was way ahead in the polls, and refused to participate in any debates until December, just a month and a half before Iowa.  If the DNC had scheduled 20 debates and started them in April or May of 2015, Clinton would have just skipped them anyway.

And there was nothing stopping Clinton, Sanders, and all the other candidates from ditching the DNC debates altogether and just agreeing to a debate schedule of their own making.  Except that, again, Clinton wouldn't have gone along with many more (and earlier debates), and no one would have watched debates without the frontrunner.  So she was always going to have a good deal of leverage on this issue, regardless of what the DNC decided.

I would make an exception for the simple fact that you need to recruit candidates in tough seats in the first place to allow for circumstances to provide such a wave but both Perez and Ellison campaigned on doing exactly that, so...

How much of a role does the DNC even play in such recruitment?  Isn't that more of a task for the DCCC and DSCC?

[Mr. Morden]

Btw, on the subject of party chairs and responsibility for downballot losses, I'll quote Matthew Yglesias's tweet on this:

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/835692464962998272

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