One More Thing About Political Parties
I’ve written about political parties on the last two Fridays, but I’m going to write about them again today because there’s one more important point I want to share.
We’re all in this current pickle, not because our political parties are too strong, but because they’re too weak. Last week I wrote about the functions of political parties; here’s the link to that article in case you didn’t read it or have forgotten it. https://open.substack.com/pub/kamcpherson/p/join-the-party?r=9ajr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Here's a reminder of what political parties are expected to do:
Our problem is that our political parties don’t do any of these things very well.
Nomination: in 2016, TFG got the GOP nomination against the wishes of most of the party leadership. He essentially hijacked the party to gain personal power. Bernie Sanders (an Independent) tried to do the same thing in the Democratic party; his efforts were eventually thwarted, but not before he caused some permanent damage to Hillary Clinton, the eventual nominee. This kind of effort to go around the party is made possible in large part because political parties have moved away from the traditional ways of selecting their candidates – caucuses and conventions – and now rely mostly on primary elections. This move began with the progressive reforms of the early 20th century, and these events now dominate the political landscape during the first half of a presidential election year. Candidates now routinely appeal directly to voters rather than submit themselves to the discipline of a party establishment. It is inarguably more democratic to conduct elections this way, if by “democratic” you mean pursuing a result that more directly reflects the will of the voters. But it is harmful to democracy in the larger sense, in that it diminishes the importance of political parties)which has other negative impacts).
Organization: in the last 20 years – and especially since the 2010 Citizens United SCOTUS decision derailed the most significant effort to regulate campaign finance well-funded special interest groups have been able to bypass the efforts to control the flow of money and support to potential candidates. Rather than try to appease the DNC or the RNC in order to get their support, candidates can simply go directly to their monied interests and get everything they need to run a successful campaign. The Koch brothers and other deep pockets like them can easily buy public officials. Combine this with the increasing power of social media (even though Musk continues to work to destroy Twitter), and you have a system where money can be raised, information can be widely distributed, and events can be advertised without a candidate having to do anything to gain the support of a party – which normally did these things.
Policy choices: traditionally, a party built a platform – a set of policy positions on which their nominees agreed to campaign. If candidates didn’t adhere to these positions – at least in general terms – they would be denied the support of the party. But, as we’ve already seen, candidates no longer rely on parties to support their campaigns, so the party platform is not considered an important part of the process. It’s important not to”both-sides” this issue. The public generally understands the principles that underlie the Democratic Party platform. They may not know all the details, but voters are generally able to find easily accessible information about what the party stands for. They may not like it, but they know it. The GOP, on the other hand, dispensed entirely with the idea of a platform before the 2020 election. Senator McConnell noted at one point that the GOP was supporting “[TFG]’s ‘America First’ Agenda.” The problem is, of course, that we should recognize that TFG’s purported “agenda” changes with the weather, and depends a whole lot on who has kissed up to him most fulsomely and recently.
Coordination: parties traditionally have created shared assumptions about preferred policy outcomes during the campaign, and then committed to achieving these options if they are chosen to lead the country. Again, individualism has become the name of the game. Since political parties aren’t doing very well in the three areas I’ve already talked about, they don’t have the ability to control the policy outcomes either. All you have to do is look at Speaker McCarthy’s inability to control the Clown Car Caucus in the House of Representatives. A party without a grounding policy agenda has no reason to work together to solve problems. Instead, its members pursue a performative style of politics, in which it's more important to look like you’re governing than to actually govern.
Given the way that the party system is failing to accomplish any of the things that parties exist to do, it’s not surprising that Americans continue to fall away from the idea of “belonging” to a political party. One popular phrase that I firmly disagree with is the statement people often make: “I vote for the person, not the party.” If this is what you do, then you should not be surprised that your elected officials do not do what you want them to do. You supported them because they look like a politician, or you like the way they present themselves, or they have a nice-looking family or a cute dog or because they can benchpress and flex. But unless you actually know them individually, you are not voting for “the person;” you’re voting for the carefully curated image they present to the public. You don’t have any idea what they would vote for because they don’t feel compelled to tell you.
I used to tell my high school students that they should make their voting choices by, first, identifying the party whose platform most aligns with their interests, and, second, supporting the candidate from that party. I followed this with the caveat that went something like this: “Unless, of course, your party is supporting a criminal or a con artist.” We would always chuckle when I said this because it was inconceivable that a party would nominate a criminal or con artist. I don’t think I would make the same statement today, but I still hold to the principle.
If parties are not performing the functions for which they exist in democracies, it’s easy to predict the outcome.