I’ thinking of this thread in terms of American party politics, but mostly because I know nothing about party politics. Come to think of it, I also don’t know much about the internal workings of so-called “fringe” American parties like the Green or Libertarian parties, and it would be great if some of those folk can join in to educate the rest of us.
It strikes me that this is an issue for Democrats and especially Republicans in this election cycle. VERY conservative Republican candidates have seemingly come from nowhere and displaced “establishment” candidates, and in the process alienated and driven out many centrist Republicans, and driven the party farther to the right than ever before. Just a few days ago there were some audio tapes release showing that Sharon Angle seems to think the Republicans are nearly as much a threat to her as Democrats. Though once the candidate wins the nomination, the party feels obliged to fall in line and support whatever degree of wacky is required, Christine O’Donnell being a good example.
On the Democratic side, there is Alvin Greene. I thought about adding Joe Sestak as well, but at least Sestak does have a history and electoral record with the party. Greene (to me) seems capable of little more than tying his shoes, yet there he is as the Democratic candidate for US Senator. If there are others, please let me know.
There may be a separate question of whether the parties should have control of who their candidates are, but as they are political parties nominating candidates, I don’t really see what kind of brakes they can put on candidates unless they can put brakes on people who claim party membership and then vote for the, um, not very welcome candidates.
I don’t see how they can put brakes on membership either, do maybe we’re just stuck. Any thoughts on a solution? Do you think it’s even a problem?
Political parties used to have WAY more control over who was nominated, via the state caucas and convention systems. The problem was those systems were overwhelmed by hand-picked slates from party bosses ratified by a handful of party regulars.
For the Democrats that led to explosions like the 1948 convention (where the progressives AND the conservatives both walked out), the credentials battle of 1964, the chaos of 1968 and the pyrrhic victory of the insurgents of 1972. The Republicans got the Goldwater revolt of 1964 and the Reagan-Ford battle of 1976. None of them were pretty.
In many countries, political parties are more tightly organized clubs and you can’t call yourself a “member” of a party unless you pay dues and have a party membership card; and you can be expelled for your politics at the leadership’s discretion. That has never been the case in America. No dues, no cards, no vetting. You can register as a Democrat or Republican, but that means nothing but that you get to vote in that party’s primaries. (If you register as a Libertarian or something it means not even that.) You can run for office as a Dem or Pub just by saying you are one and paying the filing fee, etc., regardless of your political record if any. No one in the GOP has the authority to say David Duke is not as good a Republican as John McCain, no Democrat can say with authority that Lyndon LaRouche is not a “real” Democrat.
OTOH, we probably wouldn’t want to go as far as the Soviet system. I don’t mean the state socialism and totalitarian dictatorship, I mean the arrangement where all the real power was in the hands of Communist Party officials who might or might not hold any state office, and it didn’t much matter if they did, and the state executives took their marching orders nominally from the Supreme Soviet but in practice from the Party’s Central Committee.
We could tighten up party organization and still keep our multiparty electoral democracy. But, do we want to put that much power into the hands of party officials who are not accountable to the general electorate? Do we want a president who always has to check with his party’s chairman before he signs a bill?
Is the idea here that the parties can control who can become a member? I don’t like that concept (I generally don’t like the ideological purges in either party since they are supposed to contain a diversity of opinions), and I’m not sure the parties want it either. Their usual goal is to become as big as possible so they can get as many votes as possible. You don’t win more votes by excluding people.
There’s an even bigger question whether “we” as a government should be legislating the structures within political parties. I’m thinking that sounds like a bad idea.
So how did we get from a party boss structure to what we have now? Internal revolts leading to rule changes?
No, in my mind the question is whether the parties should have more control over their candidates, which leads me to the issue of controlling membership as a means of controlling candidates. If you or anyone else has an idea of how to separate those two issues, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
No, they’re not supposed to. It just works out that way because the first-past-the-post, winner-take-all nature of our electoral system forces anyone who wants to participate to huddle under one of two “big tents.” It would be better – better for purposes of the individual voter’s knowing exactly what policy/ideology package he/she is voting for when he/she votes for a candidate – if we had a multiparty system and every party were more ideologically homogeneous. Then every party’s platform would alienate and enrage at least 3/4 of the electorate, but at least there would be no ambiguity or vagueness in it.
Also, under some systems of proportional representation, it is the party leadership who gets to decide which of the party’s candidates appear at the top of the “party list” on the ballot and actually have a chance of getting into office, and which are listed at the bottom purely as a matter of recognition. We could move a very long way in that direction without fear of becoming like the USSR.
Pretty much, yeah. That was the whole point of the movement to institute primary elections – let the party’s voters do an end-run around the party officials. There were a lot of “internal revolts leading to rule changes” in the 1960s – look up the history of the “New Politics” movement.
That thinking was in the tradition of the early-20th-Century Progressive movement – a movement which embodied a curious combination of elitism and populism, and which was hostile to established partisan/urban political machines, and which gave us ballot initiatives, recall elections, and non-partisan elections for city governments.
But, remember, in the old days, all American intrapartisan politics was local. Neither the Dems nor the Pubs ever had much centralized national party hierarchy. The “party boss structure” existed mainly at the level of urban political machines, and nationally only as and when local bosses got together in their smoke-filled room.
Hm. That does bring me back to my original thought, which is that I don’t see how it’s a good thing for the parties to have more control.
It’s also the nature of having a very large country where what’s middle of the road in one state might be conservative or liberal in another. I think I already made it clear I’d support a multiparty system, but unless you think the parties are going to stop being national organizations altogether and go back to being regional ones, they’re going to have a range of opinions.
It is a good thing for the voters to know what policy/ideology package they’re voting for. Centralized control promotes that goal; our present model, where the party name is just a convenient label for candidates who are essentially independent entrepreneurs, does not.
What? Why? A Libertarian in Alabama is not significantly different ideologically from a Libertarian in New York. The regional difference is that Libs might win 20% of the seats in one state’s legislature and 0% in another state’s.
The problem with the two party system in America is that theoretically a politician is elected to represent the will of the people when in reality his job is simply to get elected. And remain in office. Therefore the first (and probably only) litmus test a candidate must pass is “Is he electable?” If he survives this dunking stool, the party machine grinds into gear behind him.
Even this low bar can be hurdled. Christine O’Donnell was a Republican pariah but her upset win made the party grudgingly acknowledge her. She’s behind by double digits and will lose the Senate race in Delaware and the Republicans are far from happy, not because the will of the people might be unheard, but simply with losing that seat.
In other countries, many political parties are associated with specific concerns, the Grund in Germany, for example.
Michael Bloomberg is yet another example of an outsider who will never get a shot. He would love to run for President but his people can’t figure out a way to make it even remotely plausible. He can’t possibly win the election outright (even with his millions) so the Electoral College, where he would have no support, would decide the election. And he would lose.
Sometimes when the cancer is too deep, a doctor’s only answer to the patient can be, “I can only give you two weeks to live.” If you’re as smart as Henny Youngman, you tell him that you can’t pay him until the first of the month. Then, maybe he’ll give you another two weeks.
In other words the voters have no way of knowing what the candidate stands for … unless they pay attention to what the candidate is saying. I’m not seeing this as a problem.
A Republican in New York is significantly different from one in Alabama and a Democrat in Texas is significantly different from one in Massachusetts. And neither is a libertarian. They have some elements in common (often they’re just vague principles) but differ on a lot of particulars. Any national organization is going to account for that.
The Australian ballot forces the government to have some involvement with political parties, because the government must certify who carries the party label on the general election ballot. The nomination can be made by caucus, committee, convention, or direct primary, but the government must have some means of recognizing that Convention or Committee X is the one authorized to speak for Party X, and to resolve the inevitable disputes.
For every office except the presidency, the switch to nomination by state-run primary took place during the Progressive Era, not merely “in its tradition”. By 1920 almost every state was nominating by primary for state offices and members of Congress.
The state-run primary, of course, involved the state in party affairs to a much greater degree than the Australian ballot. It gave the state more power and the party less, which I don’t believe was healthy.
One consequence is the problem discussed in this thread–that parties have no means of keeping extremists or nincompoops off of their ticket. I see no way to avoid this without abolishing the state-run primary, and I see no market for that idea.
How is it a good thing for the Republican party to have candidates like Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell? These two in particular bad mouth their party as much as the do the Dems. And the party itself is obliged to either support them, or repudiate them and concede the seat to the Dems. So they end up supporting them, which pushes the party so far to the right that their moderates abandon them in droves.
Those candidates aren’t a good thing for the Republican party, and primary challengers aren’t so great for the Democrats either. The parties do try to stop those things from happening, and I understand why they do it. My question is, is it a good thing for the voters if the parties have more control over the nominating process? It seems to me that as the parties get more control, the voters have less input on who the candidates will be.