In the movie Crimson Tide, nuclear submarine Capt. Frank Ramsey (Gene Hackman) schools Lt. Cmdr. Ron Hunter (Denzel Washington) on questioning the orders of superiors. He says, “We’re here to preserve democracy, not practice it.”
You can say the same about the traditional roles of the main political parties in the United States, where those who know all the ins and outs, rules, data points, and political terrain have long shaped internal elections behind the scenes. Party leaders’ No. 1 task was to filter out bad candidates and recruit and promote the good ones. Parties were a vehicle for what was in the best interest of the parties, which purported to represent their members.
This, of course, can be used to nonmembers’ advantage. Libertarians and socialists, for example, align with the GOP or Democratic Party as a means of getting elected, and not much else. If Donald Trump, who only recently became a Republican, and Bernie Sanders, who isn’t a Democrat but is currently the front-runner in the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination, ran for president as independents, they wouldn’t come close to winning and would instead be treated as, at most, spoilers.
All of which is to say: Political parties have long served beneficial purposes.
Unfortunately, people embrace political parties with the same warmth as they do insurance salesmen and IRS auditors. The haters have convinced themselves that parties have the entire system “rigged” — getting a decent push from Trump and Sanders on that front — when it’s far from the truth.
A popular hue and cry is the influence of “big-money donors” and “special interests” in parties choosing nominees. During a debate in 2016, Trump claimed that those booing him in the audience were Jeb Bush’s “donors and special interests out there.” Sanders makes similar claims, accusing “establishment” Democrats of getting donations from billionaires to fuel their campaigns.
Campaign finance reform such as McCain-Feingold was supposed to “get money out of politics.” The reality is, it did more to take power away from parties and leave it in the hands of outside groups and super PACs that focus on specific issues, creating an environment where compromise is a dirty word. Groups such as Planned Parenthood and NextGen Climate Action spent nearly $48 million in 2016 against Republican candidates. In a real twist of irony, the PAC End Citizens United (named after the Supreme Court decision that paved the way for super PACs) spent just under $11 million against Republican candidates in 2016.
While these groups spend the bulk of their resources on defeating Republicans, liberal groups such as NARAL and EMILY’s List also target Democrats who don’t toe the line on abortion.
Republicans faced a similar dilemma with the rise of the Tea Party, and groups such as Club for Growth and Heritage Action pushed for more conservative candidates the “establishment” didn’t want. In 2010, upstart candidates without party backing won Senate primaries in Delaware and Nevada and went on to lose winnable races in the general election.
Perhaps nothing reveals the increasing weakness of the two parties more than the primary system for choosing presidential candidates. In 2015, Trump threatened to consider a third-party bid if the GOP did not treat him “fairly.” Instead of telling Trump to take a walk, the party acquiesced. Reince Priebus, then the party’s chairman, flew to New York City to meet with Trump and came up with a silly pledge for all GOP candidates to sign saying they’d support the nominee no matter what.
The GOP, following the 2012 nomination process, changed the rules, giving more favor to the front-runner, and made the mistake of allowing states to pick and choose how they wanted to allocate delegates. It benefited Trump. Through early March 2016, Trump only had 35% of the primary vote but locked in 44% of the delegates. As the primary went on and candidates dropped out, Trump boosted his delegate count thanks to winner-take-all contests. For example, Trump won Florida with 45% of the vote. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich had 51% among the three of them. Still, Trump won all 99 delegates in the state.
Sanders, who is not a Democrat and was never a member of the Democratic Party, kicked and screamed enough after losing the 2016 nomination that the party changed the rules for how superdelegates can vote at the Democratic National Convention. Superdelegates are typically made up of state party leaders and officers while still being automatic delegates to the convention. They cannot vote in the first round of a contested convention. They can vote in subsequent rounds, but every Democratic convention since the 1970s settled on a candidate in the first round of voting.
The open primary is another factor in the weakening of parties, allowing unaffiliated voters to have a say in who gets the party nomination. It’s another “democracy” trope that sounds like a great idea but is genuinely absurd. Why should Republicans have a say in whom the Democratic Party nominates and vice versa? In South Carolina, an open primary state, Republican Party leaders urged conservatives to vote for Sanders in the Saturday primary, hoping for a Sanders win, which they believe makes it easier for Trump to prevail in November.
Making changes will prove difficult. Arthur Brooks said in a 2018 interview before the release of his book, Love Your Enemies, that the fringes are controlling the debate: 15% on the Right and another 15% on the Left make the decisions because they’re louder than the other 70%.
Closing primaries, using preference voting in primaries and caucuses, and changing convention rules to put more influence back in the hands of party leaders will be met with cries of “elitism” and the system being “undemocratic.” But until structural changes are made, political candidates with no ties to the parties will continue to use parties as a mechanism for their political aspirations.
For all the talk of how parties favor “the establishment” and “the elites” at the expense of “the voters,” the reality is, the parties have never been weaker. Just ask Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of the story, End Citizens United was incorrectly identified as a Super PAC. It is a PAC with an independent expenditure arm.
Jay Caruso is managing editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
