I’m giving a presentation today at a local retirement community called “Patriots’ Colony.” It was built to provide upscale retirement living to former members of the military, although its focus expanded to include anyone with government service. There have been a few complications as this day approached. I was exposed to COVID last week, and I had to wait for a negative PCR test before they would let me give this talk. That’s appropriate. Then, someone who lives in the complex passed away last week, and the memorial service is scheduled for 11 AM this morning, which is when I was scheduled to speak. My talk had to be pushed back. That’s also appropriate. I’m now giving the talk at 7:00 tonight and they’re hosting me for dinner at 5:30. That should be nice.
Here’s how this came about. One of the residents at Patriots’ Colony took the Osher Class on political parties that I taught a few years ago, and he called me because he thought a condensed version of my course would be a good subject for their monthly meeting. I’ll talk for about 45 minutes and answer a few questions.
I wrote about this class – It’s Party Time! – on July 12, so take a look if you want to recall what it was all about. For this presentation, I’m going to use many of these slides.
The main topics for my talk will be what political parties do. The traditional list of political party functions includes recruiting candidates for public office, organizing and running elections, presenting policies to voters, and accepting responsibility for operating the government. In this essay, I want to talk about how well our parties perform these functions (spoiler: they don’t do them very well at all.)
Recruit Candidates for Public Office: Grade -- D
Traditionally, the political parties choose candidates to run under their label. We all know about “the old days” when these decisions were made by party leaders hidden away in the proverbial smoke-filled room. By the time regular voters had a chance to weigh in on candidates, the nominations were over and the voters’ choices were limited to the names the parties had selected.
This was done either by a caucus or convention. A caucus is a political party gathering in which party members choose candidates for an election. At a caucus, participants may openly debate the candidates’ credentials and electibility; in addition, the voting process itself may not be conducted by secret ballot. Instead, caucus-goers may vote by raising hands or gathering in groups organized by their preferred candidate. Historically, caucuses were the dominant method by which the major political parties determined their presidential nominees. Today, caucuses are less common than primary elections. In 2016, only 13 states selected their chosen party candidate through the caucus system.
A convention is another way of selecting candidates. The first conventions were held in secret, without any input from voters. For many years, the conventions were important in the process of selecting a party candidate for president, because no candidate had garnered the required number of votes to secure the nomination prior to the convention. In the last several decades, the successful candidate was known before the convention, which then became kind of a celebration of the party rather than a decisive event.
Primary elections have taken the place of party caucuses and conventions as the mechanism for choosing a party’s candidate – not only for president but for other down-ballot races as well. Primaries began as a progressive political reform at the turn of the 20th century, but have taken hold since the 1970s as the major way parties nominate their candidates. Some states hold open primaries – voters can vote in a party primary no matter what their voter registration is. Voters have to choose which primary they want to vote in if both parties are holding primary elections on the same day. At this point, 24 states have open primaries. This includes Virginia, which could not have a closed primary because it does not register voters by party. Other states hold closed primaries – only registered members of the party can vote in the primary.
This is how this has worked in recent elections Virginia. In 2016, both the Democrats and Republicans held presidential primaries on the same date. When voters went to the polls, they were given one party’s primary ballot after they specified which party primary they wanted to participate in. I heard voters complain about this – they said it violated their right to a secret ballot. It doesn’t – there’s no other way to do this.
In 2021, when Virginia was electing a governor, the Democrats held a primary election and the Republicans chose their nominee through a convention. This decision was taken by the Republicans because one potential nominee — Amanda Chase — was of the “burn it all down” mentality and she had a lot of support among the Trump wing of the party. The party leaders didn’t want her to get the nomination, so they avoided the popular vote altogether and choose the nominee themselves. Their decision was a good one for the Republicans in Virginia – their nominee, Glenn Youngkin, is currently the governor of the state.
The decline in party control over who gets the nomination was evident in the 2016 presidential election. The Republican Party didn’t want Donald Trump to be their nominee, but his personal popularity, fund-raising, and voter mobilization overwhelmed the more traditional nominees. Trump took the nomination despite the opposition of most mainstream Republicans. We are currently experiencing the consequences of the weakness of the Republican Party establishment.
The Democrats were also divided by an intra-party struggle in 2016. Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont, sought the nomination of the Democratic Party for president. He was not a Democrat and never intended to become a Democrat, yet he came very close to winning the party’s nomination. Hillary Clinton, who ultimately was the party’s nominee, spent precious time and money fending off the challenge from Sanders. The bruising battle alienated many Sanders voters who chose not to vote at all, leading to Clinton’s defeat on election day.
By my grading scale, both parties get a “D” for their inability to recruit candidates for public office. The only reason it’s not an “F” is that in more localized races the party support is more important. It has virtually ceased to be important in national races. We have to look only at the Republican nominees for Senate in 2022 to recognize this: Hershel Walker (GA), J.D. Vance (Ohio), and Dr. Oz (PA and NJ) would not have been the choices of the party establishment. The incompetence of these nominees will be a major reason for the failure of the Republicans to take control of the Senate if that is what happens in November. We can only hope.
Organize and Run Elections: Grade – C
The American political system is characterized by Federalism – the division of power between the national government and the states. The part of the Constitution that defines the powers of the national government, Article I Section 8, does not list the power to run elections; this power is thus left to the states. This means that the national party organizations have almost no ability to run elections within the states – even national elections, where it might seem reasonable to have national control. But it has never worked that way.
The administration of elections is controlled by state elected officials and bureaucrats, not by the political parties. In Virginia, that office is called the Virginia Department of Elections. The parties have almost total discretion over their primary elections – including both the timing and process of the elections. The State Board of Elections is the regulatory board for the Department of Elections. It is authorized to prescribe standard forms for voter registration and elections, and to supervise, coordinate, and adopt regulations governing the work of local electoral boards, registrars, and officers of election.
The state political parties control the nominating process for the party – caucuses, conventions, or primaries. The state party organizations oversee the county party organizations and help fund campaigns by raising and then distributing campaign contributions.
By my grading scale, the parties get a “C” for how well they perform the function of organizing and running elections. This is perhaps not a fair grade – in our system, the parties have little power to do this even if they wanted to, so it’s maybe not fair to downgrade them for this fault. It’s only in comparison to other political systems, where the parties play a greater role in this process, that the American political parties fall short.
Present Policies to Voters: Grade – C
How do we find out what a particular political party stands for? One of the best ways is to look at their platform – the set of ideas they “stand on.” The different elements of the platform are called “planks.”
Party Platforms
American political parties are organized on a national, state, and local basis. Every four years, the parties hold a national convention to nominate a presidential and vice presidential candidate. They also meet to approve a party platform of issues and positions upon which the candidates will run. A party platform is a set of principles, goals, and strategies designed to address pressing political issues. Each party's platform is broken down into "planks," or declarations that speak to each specific issue.
The 2020 Democratic Party platform, approved on August 17, 2020, runs more than 60 pages and sets out what the Democratic Party wants on issues ranging from COVID through the economy, achieving universal health care, reforming the criminal justice system, protecting civil rights and voting rights, achieving racial justice, protecting women’s rights, curbing bun violence, combating the climate crisis, and more. You get the idea. We all understand what the Democrats stand for. If you like what they stand for, you vote for them. If you don’t like what they stand for, you vote for someone else.
It is hard to lay out the 2020 Republic Party platform, because they didn’t produce one. They suggested looking at the 2016 platform to see what the Republican Party stands for. Ballotpedia notes that on June 20, 2020, the Republican National Committee decided to use its 2016 platform in 2020. Their rationale was that because of the pandemic, a smaller group of delegates than normal would be tasked with drafting the platform, and they feared leaving out important voices. They instead adopted a resolution saying that the party platform was to support President Trump’s America First agenda. No one is really sure what this means, of course, because Trump is not exactly a policy kind of guy.
Plans vs. Accomplishments
A platform is a list of things the party would like to do. Accomplishing those objectives is another challenge, and our parties are not able to do this very well. Over the past 30 years, Congress has become so hyperpartisan that there is little room for compromise “across the aisle” because that’s seen as setting up a victory for the “other side.” Even though the Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress, they have had difficulty getting things done because of Republican refusal to consider voting for any of Biden’s agenda and because of the lack of party control over its own members. (I’m talking about you, Joe Manchin.)
By my grading scale, the parties get a “C” for how well they present policies to voters. The Republican party’s failure in this regard is most obvious; their platform in 2020 was “whatever Trump wants,” and that continues to be their platform. The Democratic Party is better is laying out its platform, but has struggled to achieve its goals because of the lack of party control over its members, particularly in the Senate.
Accept Responsibility for Operating the Government: Grade – F
Although we are in a period of unified government right now (the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the Presidency), this situation is not common in our recent history. During the last two years of the Trump administration, the Republicans did not have control of the House of Representatives. President Obama had control of the House for only two years of his time in office, and of the Senate for only four years. Before that, President Bush did not have control of the Senate or Senate for two of his eight years in office.
When there is divided control over the government, each party can blame the opposition party for the failure to get things done. In a parliamentary system, in which it is not possible to have a divided government (the executive is chosen from the majority party in the legislature), a government that fails to accomplish its stated objectives has to step down and/or call for new elections. This doesn’t happen in the United States.
By my grading scale, the parties get an “F” for how well they accept responsibility for operating the government.
Americans don’t like their political parties. The approval ratings for both parties are low and are getting lower. However, I suggest that we don’t like our parties because they are not doing what parties are supposed to do – as I have laid out in this essay – and that the way to improve our political system operates is to strengthen our political parties.
Excellent! Enjoy your dinner and evening.
Yeah, ya got that right!