Chapter 08 - Political Parties

Transcription

1 Chapter 08 - Political Parties The state of the political parties is a matter of constant concern for the media. Even when an election is relatively far off, commentators obsessively assess the relative fortunes of the Republican and Democratic parties. As election draw closer, polls concentrate on which political party individual voters "belong" to or support. Prior to an election, a typical poll usually asks the following question: "Do you consider yourself to be a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent?" For many years, Americans were divided fairly evenly among these three choices. Today, about 40 percent of all voters call themselves independents. Of course, independents are not represented as such in Congress, and three-quarters or more of all independents lean toward either the Republicans or the Democrats. Still, the power of independents might be enhanced if changes were made in the way that we choose candidates. After the elections are over, the media publish the election results. Among other things, Americans learn which party will control the presidency and how many Democrats and Republicans will be sitting in the House of Representatives and the Senate when the new Congress convenes. Notice that earlier, when discussing party membership, we put the word belong in quotation marks. We did this because hardly anyone actually "belongs" to a political party in the sense of being a card-carrying member. To become a member of a political party, you do not have to pay dues, pass an examination, or swear an oath of allegiance. Therefore, we can ask an obvious question: If it takes almost nothing to be a member of a political party, what, then, is a political party? WHAT IS A POLITICAL PARTY? A political party might be formally defined as a group of political activists who organize to win elections, operate the government, and determine public policy. Political parties are thus quite different from interest groups, which seek to influence, not run, the government. Political parties also differ from factions, which are smaller groups that are trying to obtain power or benefits. Factions preceded the formation of political parties in American history, and the term is still used to refer to groups within parties that follow a particular leader or share a regional identification or an ideological viewpoint. For example, until fairly recently the Democratic Party was seen as containing a southern faction that was much more conservative than the rest of the party. Factions are subgroups within parties that may try to capture a nomination or get a position adopted by the party. A key difference between factions and parties is that factions do not have a permanent organization, whereas political parties do. Political parties in the United States engage in a wide variety of activities. Through these activities, parties perform a number of functions for the political system. These functions include the following:

2 1. Recruiting candidates for public office. Because it is the goal of parties to gain control of government, they must work to recruit candidates for all elective offices. 2. Organizing and running elections. Although elections are a government activity, political parties actually organize voter-registration drives, recruit volunteers to work at the polls, provide much of the campaign activity to stimulate interest in the election, and work to increase voter participation. 3. Presenting alternative policies to the electorate. 4. Accepting responsibility for operating the government. When a party elects the president or governor - or the majority of the members of a legislative body - it accepts the responsibility for running the government. This includes developing linkages among elected officials in the various branches of government to gain support for policies and their implementation. 5. Acting as the organized opposition to the party in power. The "out" party, or the one that does not control the government, is expected to articulate its own policies and oppose the winning party when appropriate. The major functions of American political parties are carried out by a small, relatively loose-knit nucleus of party activists. This arrangement is quite different from the more highly structured, massmembership organization typical of many European parties. American parties concentrate on winning elections rather than on signing up large numbers of deeply committed, dues-paying members who believe passionately in the party's program. A HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES The United States has a two-party system, and that system has been around since before The function and character of the political parties, as well as the emergence of the two-party system itself, have much to do with the unique historical forces operating from this country's beginning as an independent nation. Indeed, James Madison linked the emergence of political parties to the form of government created by our Constitution. Generally, we can divide the evolution of our nation's political parties into seven periods: 1. The formation of parties, from 1789 to The era of one-party rule, from 1816 to The period from Andrew Jackson's presidency to the eve of the Civil War, from 1828 to The Civil War and post-civil War period, from 1856 to The Republican ascendancy and the progressive period, from 1896 to The New Deal period, from 1932 to about 1968.

3 7. The modern period, from approximately 1968 to the present. The Formative Years: Federalists and Anti-Federalists The first partisan political division in the United States occurred before the adoption of the Constitution. As you will recall from Chapter 2, the Federalists were those who pushed for the adoption of the Constitution, whereas the Anti-Federalists were against ratification. In September 1796, George Washington, who had served as president for two terms, decided not to run again. In his farewell address, he made a somber assessment of the nation's future. Washington felt that the country might be destroyed by the "baneful [harmful] effects of the spirit of party." He viewed parties as a threat to both national unity and the concept of popular government. Nevertheless, in the years after the ratification of the Constitution, Americans came to realize that something more permanent than a faction would be necessary to identify candidates for office and represent political differences among the people. The result was two political parties. Federalists and Republicans. One party was the Federalists, which included John Adams, the second president ( ). The Federalists represented commercial interests such as merchants and large planters. They supported a strong national government. Thomas Jefferson led the other party, which came to be called the Republicans, or Jeffersonian Republicans. (These Republicans should not be confused with the later Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln.) Jefferson's Republicans represented artisans and farmers. They strongly supported states' rights. In 1800, when Jefferson defeated Adams in the presidential contest, one of the world's first peaceful transfers of power from one party to another was achieved. The One-Party Interlude. From 1800 to 1820, a majority of U.S. voters regularly elected Jeffersonian Republicans to the presidency and to Congress. By 1816, the Federalist Party had nearly collapsed, and two-party competition did not really exist at the national level. Because there was no real political opposition to the Jeffersonian Republicans and thus little political debate, the administration of James Monroe ( ) came to be known as the era of good feelings. Democrats and Whigs Organized two-party politics returned after Following the election of John Quincy Adams as president, the Jeffersonian Republican Party split in two. The supporters of Adams called themselves National Republicans. The supporters of Andrew Jackson, who defeated Adams in 1828, formed thedemocratic Party. Later, the National Republicans took the name Whig Party, which had been a traditional name for British liberals. The Whigs stood for, among other things, federal spending on "internal improvements," such as roads. The Democrats opposed this policy. The Democrats, who were the stronger of the two parties, favored personal liberty and opportunity for the "common man." It was understood implicitly that the

4 "common man" was a white man - hostility toward African Americans was an important force holding the disparate Democratic groups together. The Civil War Crisis In the 1850s, hostility between the North and the South over the issue of slavery divided both parties. The Whigs were the first to split in two. The Whigs had been the party of an active federal government, but southerners had come to believe that "a government strong enough to build roads is a government strong enough to free your slaves." The southern Whigs therefore ceased to exist as an organized party. In 1854, the northern Whigs united with antislavery Democrats and members of the radical antislavery Free Soil Party to found the modern Republican Party. The Post-Civil War Period After the Civil War, the Democratic Party was able to heal its divisions. Southern resentment of the Republicans' role in defeating the South and fears that the federal government would intervene on behalf of African Americans ensured that the Democrats would dominate the white South for the next century. It was in this period that the Republicans adopted the nickname GOP, which stands for "grand old party." Cultural Politics. Northern Democrats feared a strong government for other reasons. The Republicans thought that the government should promote business and economic growth, but many Republicans also wanted to use the power of government to impose evangelical Protestant moral values on society. Democrats opposed what they saw as culturally coercive measures. Many Republicans wanted to limit or even prohibit the sale of alcohol. They favored the establishment of public schools - with a Protestant curriculum. As a result, Catholics were strongly Democratic. The Triumph of the Republicans. In this period, the parties were very evenly matched in strength. In the 1890s, however, the Republicans gained a decisive edge. In that decade, the Populist movement emerged in the West and South to champion the interests of small farmers, who were often greatly in debt. Populists supported inflation, which benefited debtors by reducing the real value of outstanding debts. In 1896, when William Jennings Bryan became the Democratic candidate for president, the Democrats embraced populism. As it turned out, the few western farmers who were drawn to the Democrats by this step were greatly outnumbered by urban working-class voters who believed that inflation would reduce the purchasing power of their paychecks and who therefore became Republicans. William McKinley, the Republican candidate, was elected with a solid majority of the votes. From 1896 until 1932, the GOP was successful at presenting itself as the party that knew how to manage the economy. The Progressive Interlude In the early 1900s, a spirit of political reform arose in both major parties. Called progressivism, this spirit was compounded of a fear of the growing power of large corporations and a belief that honest,

5 impartial government could regulate the economy effectively. In 1912, the Republican Party temporarily split as former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency on a third-party Progressive ticket. The Republican split permitted the election of Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate, along with a Democratic Congress. Like Roosevelt, Wilson considered himself a progressive, although he and Roosevelt did not agree on how progressivism ought to be implemented. Wilson's progressivism marked the beginning of a radical change in Democratic policies. Dating back to its very foundation, the Democratic Party had been the party of limited government. Under Wilson, the Democrats became for the first time at least as receptive as the Republicans to government action in the economy. (Wilson's progressivism did not extend to race relations - for African Americans, the Wilson administration was something of a disaster.) The New Deal Era The Republican ascendancy resumed after Wilson left office. It ended with the election of 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression. Republican Herbert Hoover was president when the Depression began in Although Hoover took some measures to fight the Depression, they fell far short of what the public demanded. Significantly, Hoover opposed federal relief for the unemployed and the destitute. In 1932, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president by an overwhelming margin. As with the election of 1896, the vote in 1932 constituted a major political realignment. The Great Depression shattered the working-class belief in Republican economic competence. Under Roosevelt, the Democrats began to make major interventions in the economy in an attempt to combat the Depression and to relieve the suffering of the unemployed. Roosevelt's New Deal relief programs were open to all citizens, both black and white. As a result, African Americans began to support the Democratic Party in large numbers - a development that would have stunned any American politician of the 1800s. Roosevelt's political coalition was broad enough to establish the Democrats as the new majority party, in place of the GOP. In the 1950s, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, the leading U.S. general during World War II, won two terms as president. Otherwise, with minor interruptions, the Democratic ascendancy lasted until about An Era of Divided Government The New Deal coalition managed the unlikely feat of including both African Americans and whites who were hostile to African American advancement. This balancing act came to an end in the 1960s, a decade that was marked by the civil rights movement, by several years of "race riots" in major cities, and by increasingly heated protests against the Vietnam War ( ). For many economically moderate, socially conservative voters, especially in the South, social issues had become more important than economic ones, and these individuals left the Democratic Party. These

6 voters outnumbered the new voters who joined the Democrats - newly enfranchised African Americans and former liberal Republicans in New England and the upper Midwest. The Parties in Balance. The result, after 1968, was a slow-motion realignment that left the nation almost evenly divided in politics. In presidential elections, the Republicans had more success than the Democrats. Until the 1990s, Congress remained Democratic, but official party labels can be misleading. Some of the Democrats were southern conservatives who normally voted with the Republicans on issues. As these conservative Democrats retired, they were largely replaced by Republicans. In 1994, Republicans were able to take control of both the House and the Senate for the first time in many years. Red State, Blue State. Nothing demonstrated the nation's close political divisions more clearly than the 2000 presidential elections. Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college by a narrow margin to Republican George W. Bush. The closeness of the vote in the electoral college led the press to repeatedly publish the map of the results state by state. Commentators discussed at length the supposed differences between the Republican "red states" and the Democratic "blue states." An interesting characteristic of the red state-blue state division is that it is an almost exact reversal of the presidential elections of Except for the state of Washington, every state that supported Democrat William Jennings Bryan in 1896 supported Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and This reversal parallels the transformation of the Democrats from an anti-civil rights to a procivil rights party and from a party that supported limited government to a party that favors expanded positive government action. A Series of "Wave" Elections Not only was the presidential election of 2000 very close, but the partisan balance in the U.S. Congress was also very close in the opening years of the twenty-first century. It is true that from 1995 until the elections of 2006, the Republicans had majorities in the House of Representatives and - except for a brief interval - in the Senate. The margin of control in the Senate, however, was frequently no more than a single vote. GOP margins in the House were also very narrow. In those years, both parties had positive images among a majority of poll respondents. Both parties enjoyed approval levels of just over 50 percent. From time to time, voters demonstrate that they are relatively dissatisfied with the performance of one or another of the major parties. This dissatisfaction can produce a "wave" of support for the other party. Unlike realignments, the effects of wave elections are temporary. The first decade of the twenty-first century was marked by a series of wave elections in which the voters punished first one party and then the other. In the end, the major parties were again closely tied in levels of support, but both had lost a substantial amount of popularity.

7 Wave Elections Sweep out the Republicans. By 2006, the Republicans were in some difficulty. As the war in Iraq dragged on, ever-larger numbers of voters came to believe that U.S. intervention had been a mistake. In the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats took control of the U.S. House and Senate in a wave election. President Bush's approval ratings were among the lowest ever recorded for a president. In December 2007, the nation's economy entered a recession - not a good sign for the party that controls the presidency. In September 2008, a worldwide financial panic turned what had been a modest recession into the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The collapse in economic activity was soon dubbed the "Great Recession." The political consequences of such a development on the eve of a presidential election were inevitable. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was elected with one of the largest margins in recent years - a 7.3 percentage-point margin over Republican candidate John McCain. The Democrats also picked up eight seats in the U.S. Senate and twenty-one seats in the House, giving them commanding majorities in both chambers. From July 2009 through January 2010, the Democrats controlled sixty Senate seats, enough to pass legislation in the face of united Republican opposition. Democrats in Trouble. By 2010, the Republicans had regained the support they lost during the previous five years. They did not achieve this feat by improving their popularity among the voters, however. Instead, it was the Democrats who lost popularity. Both parties were now polling in the 40 percent range. In the midterm elections of 2010, the Republicans benefited from one of the strongest wave elections in decades. They added a net total of sixty-three seats in the House, gaining control of that body. The Democrats lost six seats in the Senate, but retained control. The Republicans also scored heavily in state-level elections. What happened to the Democrats? One explanation is that many independents now blamed the Democrats for persistent unemployment. Not until 2010 did the economy actually begin to create more jobs than had been lost, and the recovery was very weak through 2010, 2011, and Many observers, however, argued that independents turned away from the Democrats in the belief that the party was expanding the scope of the federal government to an unacceptable degree. The approximately $800 billion stimulus package of February 2009, while initially popular, was eventually seen by many as evidence of government expansion. The Democratic health-care reform package was also crucial in fostering the perception of the party as being committed to "big government." By passing this legislation, the Democrats attained a goal dating back half a century. In the public mind, however, health care had little or no relation to the economic crisis. Republican Overreach. The incoming class of Republican House members in 2011 included a large contingent loyal to the Tea Party movement, and many incumbent members aligned themselves with the movement as well. These legislators pledged to oppose any compromise with the Democrats - even though the Democratic Party still controlled the Senate and the presidency.

8 Republican Speaker John Boehner was hard-pressed to maintain unity in his party on legislative matters. On issues of principle, however, House Republicans easily united behind an aggressive conservative agenda, expressed in the proposals of Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Ryan's bills passed the House on near-party-line votes in 2011 and 2012 but died in the Senate. Republicans contended that the plans would reduce the federal budget deficit by making enormous cuts to domestic spending. Democrats countered that the cuts would do nothing about the deficit because the bills also contained large tax cuts, and that the plans would do serious damage to valued programs such as Medicare. The uncompromising spirit of the Republicans received its greatest test in June and July of 2011, when House Republicans refused to lift the nation's debt ceiling unless the Democrats accepted large cuts in spending. President Obama and Speaker Boehner reached a compromise at the end of July, but the threat at the nation's ability to meet its obligations severely damaged the popularity of everyone concerned - especially the House Republicans. The 2012 Republican presidential primaries, in which candidates fought over who would be seen as the most conservative, also gave many people - women in particular - the impression that the GOP stood for policies well to the right of what the average voter could support. The Republicans therefore lost much of the advantage they gained in the 2010 elections. Yet the Democrats were not out of the woods either. Pundits expected very close contests in the 2012 elections - for the presidency and also for control of the U.S. House and Senate. THE TWO MAJOR U.S. PARTIES TODAY It is sometimes claimed that the major American political parties are like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the twins in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Such claims are especially popular among supporters of radical third parties, such as the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. Third-party advocates have an interest in claiming that there is no difference between the two major parties. Such allegations cannot disguise the fact that the major parties do have very substantial differences, both in their policies and in their constituents. The Parties' Core Constituents You learned in Chapter 6 how demographic factors affect support for the two parties. Democrats receive disproportionate support not only from the least well-educated voters but also from individuals with advanced degrees. Businesspersons are much more likely to vote Republican than are labor union members. The Jewish electorate is heavily Democratic; white evangelical Christians who are regular churchgoers tend to be Republicans. Hispanics are strongly Democratic, and African Americans are overwhelmingly so. City dwellers tend to be Democrats, and rural people tend to be Republicans. Such tendencies represent the influences of economic interests and cultural values, which are often in conflict with each other.

9 Core Economic Interests A coalition of the labor movement and various racial and ethnic minorities has been the core of Democratic Party support since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The social programs and increased government intervention in the economy that made up Roosevelt's New Deal were intended to ease the pressure of economic hard times on these groups. This goal remains important for many Democrats today. In general, Democratic identifiers are more likely to approve of socialwelfare spending, to support government regulation of business, and to endorse measures to improve the situation of minorities. Republicans are more supportive of the private marketplace and believe more strongly in an ethic of self-reliance and limited government. During the administrations of Democrat Bill Clinton ( ) and Republican George W. Bush ( ), it seemed for several years that the major parties had come to a consensus on the size of government. To be sure, the GOP continued to accuse Democrats of being the party of "big government." It was Clinton, however, who led the effort to reform the welfare system, cutting benefits. Bush, in contrast, added drug coverage to the Medicare program and increased federal support for public schools through the No Child Left Behind law. With the arrival of the Obama administration, however, the parties appeared to revert to their traditional positions on the size of government. The question remains as to whether the Republicans will maintain antigovernment now that they lost the presidency again and do not control the Senate. The rise of the Tea Party movement suggests that they might. Cultural Politics In recent years, cultural values have played a significant role in defining the beliefs of the two major parties. For example, in 1987 Democrats were almost as likely to favor stricter abortion laws (40 percent) as Republicans were (48 percent). Today, Republicans are twice as likely to favor stricter abortion laws (50 percent to 25 percent). Cultural Politics and Socioeconomic Status. Some years ago, Thomas Frank reported seeing the following bumper sticker at a gun show in Kansas City: "A working person voting for the Democrats is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders." (Colonel Sanders is the iconic founder of KFC, a chain of fried-chicken restaurants.) In light of the economic traditions of the two parties, this seems to be an odd statement. In fact, the sticker is an exact reversal of an earlier one directed against the Republicans. You can make sense of such a sentiment by remembering what you learned in Chapter 6 - although economic conservatism is associated with higher incomes, social conservatism is relatively more common among lower-income groups. The individual who displayed the bumper sticker, therefore, was in effect claiming that cultural concerns - in this example, presumably the right to own handguns - were far more important than economic ones. Frank argues that despite Republican control of both the White House and Congress during much of the George W. Bush administration,

10 cultural conservatives continued to view themselves as embattled "ordinary Americans" under threat from a liberal, cosmopolitan elite. Of course, the election of Barack Obama and a strongly Democratic Congress in 2008 certainly magnified such fears. One result was the Tea Party movement. The Regional Factor in Cultural Politics. Conventionally, some parts of the country are viewed as culturally liberal, and others as culturally conservative. On a regional basis, cultural liberalism (as opposed to economic liberalism) may be associated with economic dynamism. The San Francisco Bay Area can serve as an example. The greater Bay Area contains Silicon Valley, the heart of the high-tech industry. It has the highest per capita personal income of any metropolitan area in America. It also is one of the most liberal regions of the country. San Francisco liberalism is largely cultural - one sign of this liberalism is that the city has been called the "capital" of gay America. To further illustrate this point, we can compare the political preferences of relatively wealthy states with those of relatively poor ones. Of the fifteen states with the highest per capita personal incomes in 2008, fourteen voted for Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential elections of that year. Of the fifteen with the lowest per capita incomes in 2008, thirteen voted for Republican John McCain. Given these data, it seems hard to believe that upper-income voters really are more Republican than lower-income ones. Still, within any given state or region, upscale voters are more likely to be Republican regardless of whether the area as a whole leans Democratic, or Republican. States that vote Democratic are often northern states that contain large cities. At least part of this reverseincome effect may simply be that urban areas are more prosperous, culturally liberal, and Democratic than the countryside, and that the North is more prosperous, culturally liberal, and Democratic than the South. Cultural Divisions within the Democratic Party. The extremely close and hard-fought Democratic presidential primary contest between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton in 2008 exposed a series of cultural divisions within the Democratic Party that political scientists have been aware of for some time. Of course, African Americans supported Obama strongly, and women tended to favor Clinton. Beyond these obvious patterns, Clinton appeared to do well among older people, white working-class voters, and Latinos, while Obama received more support from the young and from better-educated, upscale Democrats. Yet the differences between the two candidates on policy issues were actually very small. Likewise, there was no evidence that Obama fans and Clinton backers held significantly different positions on the issues - the two groups may have been somewhat different kinds of people, but they appeared to have similar politics. To a degree, Obama's narrow victory reflects changes in the Democrats' core constituencies. Traditionally, the candidate with a stronger working-class appeal could expect to win over the largest number of Democrats. As we have noted, however, in recent years well-educated, professional individuals have shifted to the Democrats, even as voters without college degrees have grown more

11 Republican. By 2008, Obama's educated supporters made up a larger share of the Democratic Party than in years past. Still, Obama could not have won without strong support from African Americans of all classes. Cultural Divisions among the Republicans. One wing of the Republican Party, often called the Religious Right, is energized by conservative religious beliefs. These conservatives are often evangelical Protestants but may also be Catholics, Mormons, or adherents of other faiths. For these voters, moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage are key. The other wing of the GOP is more oriented toward economic issues and business concerns. These voters are often small-business owners or have some other connection to commercial enterprise. Such voters oppose high tax rates and are concerned about government regulations that interfere with the conduct of business. Of course, many Republicans are pro-business and also support the Religious Right. Some economically oriented Republicans, however, are strongly libertarian and dislike government regulation of social issues as well as economic ones. Likewise, some on the Religious Right are not particularly committed to the free market ethos of the party's business wing and are willing to support a variety of government interventions in the economy. Successful Republican presidential candidates appeal to both wings of the party. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president in 2012, initially found it hard to appeal to the Religious Right. Romney's moderate positions on a number of issues in the past had led many to doubt his conservatism (which is actually quite strong). In the end, however, Romney was able to unite his party behind him. Both business-oriented Republicans and the Religious Right were solid in their opposition to the Obama administration. Moderate and Radical Republicans. During the Obama administration, a new fault line appeared to be opening up in the Republican Party - between moderate conservatives and more radical ones. The more radical wing was often highly critical of the existing Republican Party leadership, accusing it of being little better than the Democrats. The Tea Party movement was strongly identified with this point of view. Together with groups such as the Club for Growth, Tea Party activists sought to purge the Republicans of the so-called RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). Between the newly resurgent political right and the apparent legislative overreach of the Democrats during 2009 and 2010, it may be worth asking whether the two major parties are becoming too radical. THE THREE FACES OF A PARTY Although American parties are known by a single name and, in the public mind, have a common historical identity, each party really has three major components. The first component is the partyin-the-electorate. This phrase refers to all those individuals who claim an attachment to the political party. They need not participate in election campaigns. Rather, the party-in-the-electorate is the large number of Americans who feel some loyalty to the party or who use partisanship as a cue to decide who will earn their vote. Party membership is not really a rational choice. Rather, it is an emotional tie somewhat analogous to identifying with a region or a baseball team. Although

12 individuals may hold a deep loyalty to or identification with a political party, there is no need for members in the party-of-the-electorate to speak out publicly, to contribute to campaigns, or to vote all Republican or all Democratic. Nevertheless, the party leaders pay close attention to their members in the electorate. The second component, the party organization, provides the structural framework for the political party by recruiting volunteers to become party leaders, identifying potential candidates, and organizing caucuses, conventions, and election campaigns for its candidates, as will be discussed in more detail shortly. It is the party organization and its active workers that keep the party functioning between elections, as well as ensure that the party puts forth electable candidates and clear positions in the elections. If the party-in-the-electorate declines in numbers and loyalty, the party organization must try to find a strategy to rebuild the grassroots following. The party-in-government is the third component of American political parties. The party-ingovernment consists of those elected and appointed officials who identify with a political party. Generally, elected officials do not also hold official party positions within the formal organization, although they often have the informal power to appoint party executives. Party Organization Each of the American political parties is often seen as having a pyramid-shaped organization, with the national chairperson and committee at the top and the local precinct chairperson at the bottom. This structure, however, does not accurately reflect the relative power of the individual components of the party organization. If it did, the national chairperson of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, along with the national committee, could simply dictate how the organization was to be run, just as if it were ExxonMobil or Apple. In reality, the political parties have a confederal structure, in which each unit has significant autonomy and is linked only loosely to the other units. The National Party Organization. Each party has a national organization, the most conspicuous part of which is the national convention, held every four years. The convention is used to officially nominate the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In addition, the party platform is developed at the national convention. The platform sets forth the party's position on the issues and makes promises to initiate certain policies if the party wins the presidency. After the convention, the platform sometimes is neglected or ignored when party candidates disagree with it. Because candidates are trying to win votes from a wide spectrum of voters, it can be counterproductive to emphasize the fairly narrow and sometimes controversial goals set forth in the platform. Still, once elected, the parties do try to carry out platform promises, and many of the promises eventually become law. Of course, some general goals, such as economic prosperity, are included in the platform of both parties. Convention Delegates. The party convention provides the most striking illustration of the difference between the ordinary members of a party, or party identifiers, and party activists. As a

13 series of studies by the New York Times shows, delegates to the national party conventions are different from ordinary party identifiers. Delegates to the Democratic National Convention often take stands on issues that are far more liberal than the positions of ordinary Democratic voters. Delegates to the Republican National Convention are often more conservative than ordinary Republicans. Why does this happen? In part, it is because a person, to become a delegate, must be appointed by party leaders or gather votes in a primary election from party members who care enough to vote in a primary. In addition, the primaries generally pit presidential candidates against one another on intraparty issues. Competition within each party tends to pull candidates away from the center, and delegates even more so. Often, the most important activity for the convention is making peace among the delegates who support different candidates and helping them accept a party platform that will appeal to the general electorate. The National Committee. At the national convention, each of the parties formally chooses a national standing committee, elected by the individual state parties. This national committee directs and coordinates party activities during the following four years. One of the jobs of the national committee is to ratify the presidential nominee's choice of a national chairperson, who in principle acts as the spokesperson for the party. The national chairperson and the national committee plan the next campaign and the next convention, obtain financial contributions, and publicize the national party. Picking a National Chairperson. In general, the party's presidential candidate chooses the national chairperson. (If that candidate loses, however, the chairperson is often changed.) The national chairperson performs such jobs as establishing a national party headquarters, raising campaign funds and distributing them to state parties and to candidates, and appearing in the media as a party spokesperson. The national chairperson, along with the national committee, attempts to maintain some sort of communication among the different levels of the party organization. The fact, though, is that the real strength and power of the party are at the state level. The State Party Organization. Because every state is unique, it is impossible to describe what an "average" state political party is like. Nonetheless, state parties have several organizational features in common. Each state party has a chairperson, a committee, and a number of local organizations. In theory, the role of the state central committee - the principal organized structure of each political party within each state - is similar in the various states. The committee has responsibility for carrying out the policy decisions of the party's state convention. Also, like the national committee, the state central committee has control over the use of party campaign funds during political campaigns. Usually, the state central committee has little, if any, influence on party candidates once they are elected.

14 Local Party Machinery: The Grassroots. The lowest layer of party machinery is the local organization, supported by district leaders, precinct or ward captains, and party workers. Patronage and City Machines. In the 1800s, the institution of patronage - the rewarding of the faithful with government jobs or contracts - held the local organization together. For immigrants and the poor, the political machine often furnished important services and protections. The big-city machine was the archetypal example. The last big-city political machine to exercise substantial power was run by Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley ( ), who was also an important figure in national Democratic politics. City machines are now dead, mostly because their function of providing social services (and reaping the reward of votes) has been taken over by state and national agencies. Local Party Organizations Today. Local political organizations are still able to provide the foot soldiers of politics - individuals who pass out literature and get out the vote on Election Day, which can be crucial in local elections. In many regions, local Democratic and Republican organizations still exercise some patronage, such as awarding courthouse jobs, contracts for street repair, and other lucrative construction contracts. The constitutionality of awarding - or not awarding - contracts on the basis of political affiliation has been subject to challenge, however. The Supreme Court has ruled that firing or failing to hire individuals because of their political affiliation is an infringement of the employees' First Amendment rights to free expression. Local party organizations are also the most important vehicles for recruiting young adults into political work, because political involvement at the local level offers activists many opportunities to gain experience. The Party-in-Government After the election is over and the winners are announced, the focus of party activity shifts from getting out the vote to organizing and controlling the government. Party membership plays an important role in the day-to-day operations of Congress, with partisanship determining everything from office space to committee assignments and power on Capitol Hill. For the president, the political party furnishes a pool of qualified applicants for political appointments to run the government. (Although it is uncommon to do so, presidents can and occasionally do appoint executive personnel, such as cabinet members, from the opposition party.) There are not as many of these appointed positions as presidents might like, and presidential power is limited by the permanent bureaucracy. Judicial appointments also offer a great opportunity to the winning party. For the most part, presidents are likely to appoint federal judges from their own party. Divided Government. All of these party appointments suggest that the winning political party, whether at the national, state, or local level, has a great deal of control in the American system. The degree of control that a winning party can actually exercise, however, depends on several factors. At the national level, an important factor is whether the party controls both the executive and the legislative branches of government. If it does, the party leadership in Congress may be reluctant to exercise congressional checks on presidential powers. If Congress cooperates in implementing

15 legislation approved by the president, the president, in turn, will not feel it necessary to exercise the veto power. Certainly, this situation existed while the Republicans controlled both the legislative and executive branches of government from January 2003 to January 2007, and when the Democrats controlled the government in the two years following Obama's inauguration in January The winning party has less control over the government when the government is divided. A divided government is one in which the executive and the legislative branches are controlled by different parties. After the 2010 elections, this was the situation facing the nation. Even though the Democrats still controlled the presidency and the U.S. Senate, they could not pass legislation unless it was also supported by Republicans in the House. Although House Republicans could not pass legislation either, they energetically sought to use what bargaining power they had. The Limits of Party Unity. There are other ways in which the power of the parties is limited. Consider how major laws are passed in Congress. Traditionally, legislation was rarely passed by a vote strictly along party lines. Although most Democrats might oppose a bill, for example, some Democrats would vote for it. Their votes, combined with the votes of Republicans, were often enough to pass the bill. Similarly, support from some Republicans enabled bills sponsored by the Democrats to pass. One reason that the political parties traditionally found it so hard to rally all of their members in Congress to vote along party lines was that candidates who won most elections largely did so on their own, without significant help from a political party. A candidate generally gained a nomination through her or his own hard work and personal political organization. In many other countries, most candidates are selected by the party organization, not by primary elections. This means, though, that in the United States the parties have very little control over the candidates who run under the party labels. In fact, a candidate could run as a Republican, for example, and advocate beliefs repugnant to the national party, such as racism. No one in the Republican Party organization could stop this person from being nominated or even elected. Party Polarization. In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for legislators in either party to obtain support for important legislation from members of the other party. More and more, voting takes place strictly along party lines. Discipline within the party caucuses has never been greater. The Republicans, who took the lead in the development of party unity, presented a united front throughout much of the 1990s. By 2009, the Democrats had largely caught up, although even then the party's congressional delegation contained a number of dissidents, notably the conservative Blue Dog caucus in the U.S. House. One reason for party-line voting is that political overlap between the two parties has essentially vanished. Political scientists calculated that in 2009, the most conservative Blue Dog Democrat in the House was still more liberal than the most liberal Republican - if a term such as liberal Republican still makes any sense. For much of the twentieth century, however, liberal Republicans were a real presence in the nation's politics, and so were extremely conservative Democrats. Millions of Americans formed their

16 party attachments not through ideology, but on the basis of tradition and sentiment. Old-stock New England Yankees were Republicans because New England Yankees had always been Republicans. White southerners were, by and large, Democrats because that party affiliation was part of what it meant to be a southerner. Ideologically, however, most of the southerners were well to the right of the average Yankee. Likewise, Yankee Republicans were, on average, more liberal than most southern Democrats. Today, liberal Yankees are usually Democrats, and conservative southerners are Republicans. Blocking Tactics. One effect of the new polarization is that interpersonal relationships between members of the parties have deteriorated. True, some senators and representatives are able to maintain friendships across party lines, but such friendships have become less common. A second effect is the growing tactic of blocking bills to make the other party appear ineffective, without any attempt to reach a compromise. Republicans pioneered this tactic in the 1990s under House Speaker Newt Gingrich in an attempt to embarrass Democratic president Bill Clinton, and they tried it again in 2010 and 2011, with varying degrees of success. Democrats contended that the tactic demonstrated Republican irresponsibility. It is also possible to propose - rather than oppose - legislation for political ends, however. For example, in 2010 the Democrats introduced an immigration reform package, in the apparent hopes that it would mobilize their support among Latino voters, even though it had little chance of passing or even coming to a vote. WHY HAS THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM ENDURED? There are several reasons why two major parties have dominated the political landscape in the United States for almost two centuries. These reasons have to do with (1) the historical foundations of the system, (2) political socialization and practical considerations, (3) the winner-take-all electoral system, and (4) state and federal laws favoring the two-party system. The Historical Foundations of the Two-Party System As we have seen, at many times in American history one preeminent issue or dispute has divided the nation politically. In the beginning, Americans were at odds over ratifying the Constitution. After the Constitution went into effect, the power of the federal government became the major national issue. Thereafter, the dispute over slavery divided the nation, North versus South. At times - for example, in the North after the Civil War - cultural differences have been important, with advocates of government-sponsored morality (such as banning alcoholic beverages) pitted against advocates of personal liberty. During much of the twentieth century, economic differences were preeminent. In the New Deal period, the Democrats became known as the party of the working class, while the Republicans became known as the party of the middle class and upper classes and commercial interests. In situations like these, when politics is based on an argument between two opposing points of view,

17 advocates of each viewpoint can mobilize most effectively by forming a single, unified party. The result is a two-party system. When such a system has been in existence for almost two centuries, it becomes difficult to imagine an alternative. Political Socialization and Practical Considerations Given that the majority of Americans identify with one of the two major political parties, it is not surprising that most children learn at a fairly young age to think of themselves as either Democrats or Republicans. This generates a built-in mechanism to perpetuate a two-party system. Also, most politically oriented people who aspire to work for change consider that the only realistic way to capture political power in this country is to be either a Republican or a Democrat. The Winner-Take-All Electoral System At almost every level of government in the United States, the outcome of elections is based on theplurality, winner-take-all principle. In a plurality system, the winner is the person who obtains the most votes, even if that person does not receive a majority (more than 50 percent) of the votes. Whoever gets the most votes gets everything. Most legislators in the United States are elected from single-member districts in which only one person represents the constituency, and the candidate who finishes second in such an election receives nothing for the effort. Presidential Voting. The winner-take-all system also operates in the election of the U.S. president. Recall that the voters in each state do not vote for a president directly but vote for electoral college delegates who are committed to the various presidential candidates. These delegates are called electors. In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska), if a presidential candidate wins a plurality in the state, then all of the state's electoral votes go to that candidate. This is known as the unit rule. For example, suppose that the electors pledged to a particular presidential candidate receive a plurality of 40 percent of the votes in a state. That presidential candidate will receive all of that state's votes in the electoral college. Minor parties have a difficult time competing under such a system. Because voters know that minor parties cannot win any electoral votes, they often will not vote for minor-party candidates, even if the candidates are in tune with them ideologically. Popular Election of the Governors and the President. In most of Europe, the chief executive (usually called the prime minister) is elected by the legislature, or parliament. If the parliament contains three or more parties, as is usually the situation, two or more of the parties can join together in a coalition to choose the prime minister and the other leaders of government. In the United States, however, the people elect the president and the governors of all fifty states. There is no opportunity for two or more parties to negotiate a coalition. Here, too, the winner-take-all principle discriminates powerfully against any third party. Proportional Representation. Many other nations use a system of proportional representation. If, during the national election, party X obtains 12 percent of the vote, party Y gets 43 percent of the