2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: For 2020, the Democratic Party Should Take Back Its Nomination Methods [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)at least.
The states make a lot of decisions the parties have to abide by, including whether primary or caucus and when they will take place, though the parties can apply pushes and pulls to influence that a bit. Should the people of the state have a say in this, and if so, how to do it so the majority doesn't give an advantage to one party?
The parties themselves... They are private organizations, they form to maximize the power of their members' individual voices, and heir function is to get as many people who share their basic orientation to government elected to office as possible. By their very nature, their purpose is not to further pure democracy; people who join them choose to give up some of their power to vote directly for the power of the group. If we make these changes to party structure and processes, will that weaken the purpose of parties, which is to further the goals of their members. Who votes on this? Only members, or, since the purpose seems to be to open up parties, should independents be able to have a say?
Each of your proposals seems to lead somewhere down a road but stop before the job is done. Is the real reason we're talking about opening the parties up and weakening their ability to protect their interests to eliminate parties? We've been a mainly two-party nation since our establishment, and not by law. It's been a very long time since I read why.