From the Monkey Cage: Can Bernie Sanders change how the Democratic Party chooses presidential nominees? Here’s what you need to know.

An account of the process the DNC went through to alter their rules of procedure.

- Click here for the article.

The Democratic National Convention’s rules committee convened Saturday to consider the report that it will present on the convention’s opening day in Philadelphia. The meeting was dominated by the controversial issues of the lengthy Democratic primary campaign: the role of superdelegates, the role of caucuses and, in general, how open the Democratic nomination process should be.

Here is what happened at the committee meeting:

After a series of uncontentious votes and a short recess, the committee began to consider amendments to the charter of the party and the rules of the nomination process. This began with amendments affecting the influence of superdelegates — including an amendment to abolish them and another to reduce their number. All of these amendments failed by a ratio of about 3 to 2.

At that point, committee members from both the Clinton and Sanders teams called for a recess. The ensuing three-hour break produced a unity amendment that created a post-convention commission to examine not only the superdelegate process but the other perceived shortcomings of the process. This “Unity Reform Commission” would be the successor to the Democratic Change Commission of eight years ago.

If the full convention approves the rules committee’s report on Monday, here is what will happen:

1 - No more than 60 days after the election of the next chair of the Democratic National Committee early next year, the chair will establish the Unity Reform Commission (URC).

2 - Its membership will include Clinton surrogate Jennifer O’Malley Dillon as commission chairwoman and Sanders proxy Larry Cohen as vice chair. Clinton will fill nine additional slots, and Sanders will fill seven. The next DNC chair will select three members.

3 - The URC will meet during 2017 with the goal of producing a set of rules recommendations for the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee by Jan. 1, 2018.

4 - The normal procedure is for the Rules and Bylaws Committee to consider those recommendations before sending them — potentially in an amended form — to the full Democratic National Committee for a final vote. That procedure remains intact. However, the URC retains the ability to place its recommendations before the full DNC if the Rules and Bylaws Committee “fails to substantially adopt” any of them.

From Vox: Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigns as Democratic National Committee chair

For our look at the organization of political parties.

- Click here for the article.

On the eve of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz abruptly announced that she will resign her position after the convention as part of the fallout from emails leaked from the DNCon Friday night. Donna Brazile, the veteran Democratic operative and well-known television commentator, will serve as interim chair.

Wasserman Schultz says that she plans to "address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans," and then step aside. Just a few hours earlier the plan had been for Schultz, somewhat anomalously, to not speak at her own party’s convention. Now she is out from the DNC entirely, a key concession to Bernie Sanders and to his supporters and allies as Hillary Clinton tries to put a united Democratic Party behind her for the fall election.

Sanders called it the "right decision" in a statement.

As Vox’s Tim Lee noted, none of the emails contained a smoking gun demonstrating that the primary was rigged for Clinton — or even that DNC officials set in motion any of the plans to derail Sanders’s candidacy.

But the emails do strongly suggest that some DNC leaders personally regarded Sanders as an outside threat and that they wanted him to lose.

Ask Dr. Jefferies: Are super delegates an example of checks and balances?

Hi Professor Jefferies,

I'm a student in your online American Government class. Lately I've been learning more than I ever wanted to know about Superdelegates in the Democratic party and I had just one question.  Would you consider Superdelegates as  another, and more recent example, of checks and balances?  I was watching an interview with the DNC chair and she seemed to indicate this was the case.  So, I guess my question would be, is the Superdelegate there to prevent an excess of popular democracy from swinging the party too far to the left?

And I totally understand if you don't have time to answer this, I was just curious.

Cheers
____________

Dear Just Curious,

I wouldn't consider them part of the checks and balances as we discuss them in class because they are not intended to keep each governing institution in its place. A political party isn't considered to be a governing institution - with the caveat that members of Congress organize around political parties. Parties in Congress are some sort of weird hybrid.

That said, I can see merit in her comments. Super delegates (I'll define these in a later post) are used by the leadership in the Democratic Party to limit the impact of primary voters in the party. That would be a check party elites have on party activists. Since party activists in the Democratic Party tend to swing left, they would in fact be a check on that and ensure the party doesn't go so far to the left that it cannot win a general election. Republicans have ways to ensure the party does not swing too far to the right, thought they don't use super delegates. I'll ad detail about how they try to do this elsewhere - right now their efforts don't seem to be very successful.

No worries about me not having time to answer your questions - you're paying for my time so you've got it coming.

Does this help?

From the Hill: Sanders sues Democratic Party

A Sanders staffer was found sneaking around in a data base the Democratic National Committee makes available to candidates- but which can be customized by each candidate. That apparently was the problem. The way each candidates customizes the data gives hints about how candidate strategy.

The DNC is suspending the Sander's camp's access to the database. The Sander campaign thinks the DNC wants to give an advantage to Clinton, so that's why they're suing.  

- Click here for the story.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) campaign sued the Democratic National Committee in federal court Friday evening following the suspension of his campaign from the DNC’s voter database after a security breach.

The suit claims that the campaign is losing $600,000 in donations each day that it does not have access to the data, and adds that the “damage to the campaign’s political viability as a result of being unable to communicate with constituents and voters, is far more severe, and incapable of measurement.”

The DNC barred Sanders from accessing the party’s voter file, which includes much of his campaign’s voter data, after a campaign staffer improperly accessed private data belonging to front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The vendor hired by the party to maintain the data accidentally created the security vulnerability during an update, the DNC says.

The Sanders campaign fired a supervisory staffer involved in the incident and has gone on the warpath Friday claiming that the DNC overreacted and is trying to aid Clinton’s campaign.

The suit claims that the loss of the voter file could “significantly disadvantage, if not cripple, a Democratic candidate’s campaign for public office.” It also argues that the agreement between the candidate and the DNC mandates that a candidate get 10 days written notice to fix any issue before the party can restrict access.

Vox goes further. They discuss the ongoing tension between Sanders and the DNC. They also discuss the data base in question - NGP VAN.

- Click here for: The feud between Bernie Sanders and the DNC, explained.

NGP VAN is a data technology company that allows campaigns to view a whole host of information about voters across the country who have voted for Democrats in the past.

The DNC owns the basic voter file, which it shares with primary candidates running as Democrats. This includes all three presidential candidates as well as anyone running for lower offices on the national and state levels.

From there, each campaign can take those voters profiles and make all sorts of models with them, usually to predict how persuadable they are or how likely they are to vote, say on a scale from one to 100. Models can also be used to predict voters positions on specific issues, which helps campaigns target them.

During Obama’s 2012 campaign, for example, staffers used this type of modeling to figure out which undecided voters to target for canvassing and which voters seemed less motivated and could use an extra push.

The data and sources the system can pull in are incredibly precise because they rely on detailed information about every voter — rather than something like a poll, conducted with a small sample of respondents. For that reason, these models are very expensive to build.

Campaigns share the basic voter file, so they’re looking at all the same voters. But NGP VAN puts up firewalls between them so each campaign doesn’t have access to the other’s modeling.

What’s key to understand here is that the data hosted on NGP VAN's dictates a campaign’s entire ground game, which both of Obama’s campaigns claimed as their winning advantage. Losing access to the system means that a campaign loses its own predictive models dictating which voters to target – but it also means the campaign doesn’t have access to the names of Democratic voters.

From Vox: Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble.

The author points out that the party is very weak at the state and local level.

- Click here for the story.

The Democratic Party is in much greater peril than its leaders or supporters recognize, and it has no plan to save itself.

Yes, Barack Obama is taking a victory lap in his seventh year in office. Yes, Republicans can't find a credible candidate to so much as run for speaker of the House. Yes, the GOP presidential field is led by a megalomaniacal reality TV star. All this is true — but rather than lay the foundation for enduring Democratic success, all it's done is breed a wrongheaded atmosphere of complacence.

The presidency is extremely important, of course. But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. And the vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Indeed, even the House infighting reflects, in some ways, the health of the GOP coalition. Republicans are confident they won't lose power in the House and are hungry for a vigorous argument about how best to use the power they have.

Not only have Republicans won most elections, but they have a perfectly reasonable plan for trying to recapture the White House. But Democrats have nothing at all in the works to redress their crippling weakness down the ballot. Democrats aren't even talking about how to improve on their weak points, because by and large they don't even admit that they exist.

Instead, the party is focused on a competition between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton over whether they should go a little bit to Obama's left or a lot to his left, options that are unlikely to help Democrats down-ballot in the face of an unfriendly House map and a more conservative midterm electorate. The GOP might be in chaos, but Democrats are in a torpor.

Torpor - definition.

Assessing the Democratic Debate

Here's a small sampling of what was written up. The consensus seems to be that Clinton won, Sanders impacted the content of what was discussed, and the neither of the other three candidates - Chafee, O'Malley, or Webb - did enough to distinguish themselves.

- Slate: Yes, Bernie Won Every Poll on the Internet. Hillary Still Won the Debate.
- National Journal: Why Bernie Did Better Than the Pundits Thought.
- The Atlantic: Hillary Clinton's Surprisingly Smooth Debate.

Vox offers a round up of different takes on it here: 2015 Democratic debate on CNN.

What Keeps the Democratic Party Together?

Both 2305 and 2306 students should be working through the material on political parties.

The material in 2305 covers abstract issues about parties while more specifics are offered in 2306 - since states have the power to pass laws related to parties, that seems to me to be the best way to divide up the subject.

A major point made in 2305 about parties is that certain electoral rules - winner take all elections and single member districts chief among them - lead to the creation of two large political parties that are each composed of a variety of factions. Each faction has its own set of issues it prioritizes and chooses to ally with other factions they are ore or less in agreement with. So our major parties are best understood as being coalitions - you'll note that I make that point repeatedly in the class notes.

A party is only strong if it contains within it more factions than the other one, and if those factions are in fact cohesive - they are willing to work together to achieve party goals, the primary goal being winning elections.

Prior to each election, commentators tend to speculate about whether the factions that identify with either party are cohesive enough to win.

A brief flurry of opinions were offered about whether Democrats might be able to pull it off (I'll have a few stories about Republicans soon enough). I should note that these stories are about each parties performance nationally. In Texas its a different story.

Here are a few items you might wan to run through:

- There Is No Alternative.

This author is doubtful that the coalition that elected President Obama has enough to keep itself together - apart from the personality of Hillary Clinton. But if she does not run, the coalition will fragment. No single issue binds the party together, so without the force of Hillary's personality matters for the party's electoral success.

- Clinton and the Ramshackle Democrats.

This author offers a counterpoint. The lack of a single issue that binds all factions within the Democratic Party together is a strength, not a weakness. Democrats have outperformed Republicans in most recent elections (in number of votes cast anyway): by being “sprawling” and “heterogeneous,” and doesn't depend on a particular nominee to do this.

- 7 reasons the Democratic coalition is more united than ever.

The author argues that key issues - banking reform and inequality - unify the party and that those that divide it - K-12 education - aren't topical national issues. They resonate more at the state and local level. The major divisive issue in 2008 was the Iraq War, and that has faded into the distance. The fact that each party dislikes the other so much is bad for the nation but good for party cohesion. The author states that Clinton leads the pack because of Democratic unity, not the other way around. 

Intra-party divisions are important to comprehend if one is to come to grips with the nature of American politics. And these occur because of the coalition nature of American parties, which are the result of our unique way of electing people to office.

Partisan differences in priorities on public matters

The Pew Research Center reports on the public's priorities, and includes a table contrasting what Democratic and Republican identifiers see as most important. It reinforces the key differences in the ideological viewpoints of each party's identifiers. Democrats are concerned with the environment, the poor and education. Republicans with the military, the deficit and moral breakdown:



Here are the overall numbers. The economy and terrorism dominate.

Can Elizabeth Warren drive a wedge within the Democratic Party?

Most of our attention in class has been focused on the wedge between the business and Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, but the Massachusetts Senator might do something similar to the Democratic Party.

Business interests have been as cozy with centrist Democrats as they have been with Republicans. Bill Clinton - and presumably Hillary - have been supported by them, and have each beaten back attempts by the left wing in the party to impose restrictions on business activities. Warren's repeated attacks on the financial sector - and the support they've enjoyed - have raised the possibility that a left wing populist movement might emerge to challenge Clinton, and perhaps divide the party.

We've used to drive home the idea that each of the two parties are coalitions composed of various factions that more or less see eye to eye - though they come into conflict often about what the party should stand for and how it should achieve its objectives.

Some readings:

- Could Elizabeth Warren beat Hillary Clinton?
- Elizabeth Warren’s populist insurgency enters next phase

Can Texas turn blue?

The national Democratic Party is making a play for Texas - for the first time in at least 20 years. I have to fill in gaps in this story, but the National Journal wonders if Rick Perry might help Democrats reach their goal. His refusal to accept federal dollars to expand Medicaid is only part of it:

Rejecting the federal money might not pose an immediate political threat to Texas Republicans, whose coalition revolves around white voters responsive to small-government arguments. But renouncing the money represents an enormous gamble for Republicans with the growing Hispanic community, which is expected to approach one-third of the state’s eligible voters in 2016. Hispanics would benefit most from expansion because they constitute 60 percent of the state’s uninsured. A jaw-dropping 3.6 million Texas Hispanics lack insurance.

Texas Democrats are too weak to much affect the Medicaid debate. But if state Republicans reject federal money that could insure 1 million or more Hispanics, they could provide Democrats with an unprecedented opportunity to energize those voters—the key to the party’s long-term revival. With rejection, says Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, Republicans “would dig themselves into an even deeper hole with the Hispanic community.” 

In 1994, California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson mobilized his base by promoting Proposition 187, a ballot initiative to deny services to illegal immigrants. He won reelection that year—and then lost the war as Hispanics stampeded from the GOP and helped turn the state lastingly Democratic. Texas Republicans wouldn’t be threatened as quickly, but they may someday judge their impending decision on expanding Medicaid as a similar turning point.

From Seth Masket: Parties don't get to choose their own adventure

We've been discussing the shift Democrats made on civil rights in the mid 20th Century and its ongoing consequences. Here's an observation that these shifts don't happen that often:

Huge shifts are the norm? On the contrary -- they're incredibly rare! The Democrats' shift from being the party of white supremacy to the party of civil rights was pretty much a singular act in American political history. Parties rarely pull off a major shift on a hot-button issue (that's what killed the Whigs in the 1850s), and indeed it was a very costly shift for the Democrats, breaking their electoral lock on the southern states and ultimately ending their four-decade run of controlling the House of Representatives. To be sure, parties do evolve slowly on some issues, but the parties are much better defined by consistency than change.

From the National Journal: Courting the Twenty-Somethings

I've yet to list the specific proposals that President Obama laid out in his SOTU address last week - but that'll come soon. We should try to figure out the pros and cons associated with each as well as their likelyhood of being passed into law.

But all that assumes that the proposals were made in order to impact policy. Here's an argument there is a political aspect to those proposals as well. Specifically that they will help the president's party consolidate their appeal to the 20-somethings. |

Whatever its impact on the immediate policy debate, Obama’s speech marked a milestone in his effort to anneal the Democratic Party to that coalition’s priorities. Especially striking was how much of it seemed targeted directly at the massive and diverse millennial generation, born between 1981 and 2002. Obama addressed them repeatedly: by insisting that entitlement spending on the old must face some limits to prevent it from crowding out investment in the young; by framing climate change as a generational challenge; by pledging to provide young people with more training and to confront rising college costs; and by closing with a paean to citizenship that reflected their civic impulses. “They are the leading edge of where the country is headed ideologically as well as demographically,” one senior White House aide said.

. . . That course presents unmistakable risks. Obama’s social and environmental agendas could threaten Democrats running in red-leaning states and House districts, especially in the 2014 midterm election, when turnout among young people and minorities could drop. As Obama imprints this image on his party, Democrats are unlikely to hold majorities on Capitol Hill unless they can benefit more at the congressional level from the same demographic trends of growing diversity and rising education levels that are boosting their presidential position. And if economic growth doesn’t accelerate, young people and minorities could drift from the party.

But the direction Obama reaffirmed Tuesday will also challenge the GOP’s presidential prospects, no matter how Congress treats his proposals. As Hais and Winograd note, millennials represented under one-fourth of eligible voters in 2012 but will reach 30 percent by 2016 and 36 percent by 2020. Obama won three-fifths of them in 2012, and his coming collisions with Republicans on guns, climate, deficit reduction, and other issues will further identify the GOP with positions that polls show most millennials oppose.

When we start talking about parties, and party alignments we will hit the onglng question abotu which direction each party seems to be going, and specifcally whether we might be entering an era where the Democrats may dominate politics because their coalition is beginning to be larger than the Republican coalition. Is this part of that effort? It seems to be.

From the National Journal: Republican Leaders Worry Their Party Could Divide in Two

There's concern in Washington that Rand Paul might make an independent run for the presidency and split the Republican Party in half and lead to further realignments that might impact the Democrats as well, especially if Hillary Clinton does not run.

A leading Democratic consultant released a memo detailing the chances of a third party candidate: The State of the Union.

Both reads are based on the idea that each of the two major parties - despite their dominance of the political process - are weak and vulnerable. Might we soon witness a seismic shift in the nature of the party system?

From the National Journal: Pope Benedict and the Decline of American Catholicism

The National Journal uses the resignation (or is it more properly refered to as an abdication?) of Pope Benedict to look at the political strength of Catholicism, and finds it shrinking:

Nearly one-third of Americans who were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholics. Overall, American Catholic churches lost 5 percent of their membership during the last decade, and the decline would have been much steeper if not for the offsetting impact of Catholic immigrants from Latin America.

The author suggests that Benedict helped drive a wedge between liberal and conservative Catholics in the US, but threw a few curve balls at conservatives:

It’s not surprising that more liberal American Catholics have kept their distance from Benedict, who was viewed on his election to the papacy as a doctrinaire conservative. But conservative Catholics have discovered, to their chagrin, that Benedict is not quite the ally they had hoped for when it comes to issues of economic justice. The pope made Catholic conservatives’ opposition to President Obama’s health care effort awkward, for instance, when he wrote in 2010 that universal health care was one of the “inalienable rights” of man. And conservative Catholics such as George Weigel bristled when the pope wrote about “an urgent need of a true world political authority” to address problems of economic inequality both within and between countries.

The relationship between conservatives and liberals in the American community is as tense today as it has been at any point since Vatican II. As the church loses members and trust in Catholic institutions plummets, leaders fight about whether to focus the church’s public resources on the abortion issue or on an array of broader concerns—from immigration reform to budget cuts. All the while, large elephants loom in the background, as subjects such as the celibate priesthood and ordination of women go unaddressed. With his appointment of ever more conservative bishops and cardinals, Benedict has helped tilt the U.S. bishops conference rightward just as the lay Catholics in America are expressing more liberal views on gay marriage and economic issues.

The author argues that this split among church members weakens the impact Catholics have as a group.

When we cover party identification soon enough, we will note which groups have tended to shift alliances from one party to the other. Catholics were once a solid votng bloc for Democrats, but have split alliances more recently between the two major parties. Republicans have hoped to use their conservative positions on social issues like abortion, contraception and same sex issues to peel away some Catholic support. This has had a limited impact because other Catholics have liberal positions on poverty programs. It's open question at the moment whether this will be impacted by Benedict's resignation. The answer likely depends on who replaces him and whether he is seen as a polarizing or conciliatory figure.

Looming divisions within the Democratic Party

I've posted a few items describing potential divisions with the Republican Party mostly because its unusual for the party to have them. The Democratic Party almost always has internal divisions. These reflect the diverse nature of the party.

But here's an argument that these divisions will increase during Obama's second term, since the leaders of each will begin positioning themselves for 2016. Might this undermine the party's ability to take advantage of the splits within the Republican Party? As always it will depend on whether some external force can be found that enforces party cohesion and convinces these factions to put individual goals aside.

That's always a tough order.

Republicans 2012 = Democrats 1984?

Are the Republicans today in the same situation Democrats were in 1984 after Reagan's landslide and the loss of their fourth election in five tries (which woudl be 5 out of 6 after 1988)?

A Daily Beast writer thinks they are, and argues that the national party needs to undergo the same type of fundamental transformation the Democrats went through in the mid 1980s. Democrats began to marginalize the strong liberals who had defined the party since the 1930s and started moderating their policies. Central to this effort was the establishment of the Democratic Leadership Council which set the stateg for the election of Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and set the stage for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

But marginalizing Democrats was difficult to do - as will be marginalizing conservatives now. The Tea Party has no intention of going anywhere and will continue to dominate which candidates win primaries in the Republican Party. The transformation may take time:

Back in 1984 and ’85, when the Democrats were similarly wandering in the wilderness, a good-sized chunk of Democrats said, “Enough. We’re tired of losing, and we need some updating.” I don’t by a long shot agree with every position the Democratic Leadership Council took, but I certainly know that it was on the whole a good and necessary thing; the Democratic Party obviously had to reexamine some of its positions. Change didn’t come easy, and it took one more wipeout of an election, but along came Bill Clinton, and the party drank its tonic and embraced (sort of; enough so that voters noticed the change) welfare reform and free trade.

Republicans aren’t anywhere near to exposing themselves to the kind of self-examination and intra-party debate the Democrats undertook after Reagan’s second win. Despite upholstering their speeches with ample liberal rhetoric, and in Rubio’s case those aforementioned quasi-proposals, Rubio and Ryan both stuck hard to current-day GOP gospel. Raising tax rates isn’t an option. Relying on government isn’t the answer, and all the rest. When I read the Ryan remarks I quoted above, as I first started reading those words, I thought to myself, “Ah, might I encounter here an actual nugget of self-criticism?” It came. But it was only about messaging. The substance of their positions, to them, is fine and dandy.

The Obama and Romney Vote in a Graph

From The Dish:



Unless the Republican Party begins to gain the support of non-whites, they are projected to become an increasingly minor party.

Are we witnessing a partisan realignment?

We finished discussing parties in most classes last week, and and concluded with a look at party eras - those periods of time where a specific relationship between political parties - and political forces in general - are somewhat stable. They tend to last 30-40 years, and we haven't seen one in a while, possibly since 1968.

Given that Obama not only won reelection last night, but was the first Democratic president since FDR to win consecutive elections with a majority, there's talk that we might be undergoing a long delayed shift in politics.

The Reagan Coalition, which has dominated politics since 1980 might be running out of steam, and could be replaced with a multi racial, coalition that might keep Democrats in power for some time.

Andrew Sullivan has a list of the various takes on this theme from various commentators. These includes advice - mostly unsolicited - about what Republicans need to consider doing in order to stay competitive. A consensus seems to be emerging that the Republican Party is old and white, and that wont help them much as the nation continues on the road to being majority minority.

From the NYT: Billionaires Going Rogue

Some thoughts on what havoc unleashed billionaires might have on elections in the wake of the Citizens United decision, It also provides some interesting insight into the difference between the two parties organizationally:

While, the rapid growth of well-financed and autonomous competitors threatens all existing power structures, the bulk of the costs are likely to fall on the Republican Party. The right wing of the Republican Party has more disruptive potential than the left wing of the Democratic Party because it is more willing to go to extremes: see the billboards showing Obama bowing down before an Arab Sheik, or the ads and DVD claiming that Obama is the bastard son of the African American communist, Frank Marshall Davis.

There are, furthermore, structural and historical differences between the parties: the Republican Party and the conservative establishment is institutionally stronger than the Democratic Party, with an infrastructure that served as a bulwark through the 1960s and 70s – the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Olin Foundation, etc. — when Republicans appeared to be a permanent congressional minority. Its financial prowess enabled the party to enforce more discipline on its consultants and elected officials. The Republican establishment also exercises more authority over policy and candidate selection than does its Democratic counterpart.

In recent years, the Democratic Party organization has gained some strength and it plays a much more active role in campaigns at all levels than in the past, but as an institutional force capable of command and control, it remains light years behind the Republican Party.

Republicans, in contrast to Democrats, prefer hierarchical, well-ordered organizations, and are much more willing to cede authority to those in power. Democrats, despite the discipline of individual campaign efforts, tend more toward anarchy than hierarchy. Historically, one result of this partisan difference is that the Republican establishment has tightly managed candidate selection at the presidential level. With extraordinary consistency, the party has crushed insurgent candidates and selected the next in line. Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole, for example, both had to wait until it was their turn.

The limits of party power

ABC13 reports on the tension between party candidates and party officials. It'll help us come to terms with the ongoing conflict over control of political parties.

The Harris County Democratic Party has been denied the right to remove a Democratic candidate for Harris County District Attorney. Lloyd Oliver is a perennial candidate whose allegiance seems loose. There's little evidence he's a committed member of the party, and there are some who question his fitness for office should he win.

All together, the party would like to remove him from the ticket, but he won the Democratic primary election, so he has the approval of the Democratic electorate. Party officials sued to get him thrown off the ballot, alleging that comments he made that supported a Republican disqualified him.

They sued to get him off the ballot, but Judge Bill Burke of the 189th District Court disagreed. There's no reason to overrule the decision of the electorate - even if doing so may in fact be in the best interest of the party. Missouri Republicans are dealing with a similar issue with Todd Akin.

The story contains an interesting exchange between the lawyer representing the Democrats and the reporter covering the story:

Ted Oberg: So why do you even have elections?
Dion Ramos, Democratic party lawyer: I can't answer that for you.
Oberg: Time out. You represent the Texas Democratic Party. Please tell me why they have elections if the executive committee can overrule them?
Ramos: Well, I think that that's something that is inherent in the power of a private political party.
 The courts long ago decided that though parties are private organizations, they serve public functions so they cannot make arbitrary decisions over matters - like elections - that have public consequences.