"But the guy on MSNBC said....."

When I start talking about political parties, I usually ask the students to answer some “True or False” style questions.  For example: True or False – Any politician elected under the Democratic Party label is going to believe that access to abortion should not be restricted, because that’s what the Democratic Party’s platform says.  Or, alternatively: True or False – Any officeholder elected under the Republican ticket is going to believe that tax increases are wrong, and that government budgets should be balanced by making cuts in spending, because that’s what the Republican Party’s platform says.  Of course, neither statement is absolutely true.  We can all find elected officials, be they state legislators, Congressmen, US Senators, or even occasionally a President who does not agree with his or her party’s platform position on at least one or two major issues (or sometimes even more often than that).

What's interesting is that many students seem to understand this, when we're talking about in class.  But if you ask your friends, neighbors, or relatives (especially your crazy uncle who ALWAYS seems to want to talk about politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table), many of them seem to be under the impression that our political parties are much more monolithic than that.  Whether it's because they're watching cable news (the "partisan" channels, like MSNBC and Fox) or even more "mainstream" news sources (which realizes that controversial, over-the-top statements sell more papers and TV ads than boring, complicated reality), there exists this perception that "All Democrats want to defund the police", or "All Republicans want to private Social Security."  But as we're going to find out over the next few units, when looking at HOW legislators and Governors actually ACT, we're going to find out that there's a wide range of opinion on many issues, even within the same political party.

The "Bottom-Up" organization of American Parties

 

So, why is this?  The primary reason is the “bottom-up” organization of American political parties.  What we mean by this is that party organization in the United States traditionally starts with the selection of “precinct captains”, “block captains”, or some similarly-named street-level organizer.  These people are selected by the local party activists, perhaps at a caucus (those of you who live in Minnesota have probably heard of these, and we’ll talk about them more in a little bit). These local party officers (almost all of whom are volunteers) are going to be responsible to raising funds for the local party, recruiting campaign volunteers, helping the party’s candidates with “get-out-the-vote” efforts, and the like.  In this graphic representation, notice that the "precinct"-level organizer always comes first (and also notice the direction of the arrows).

Comparing Party Organizational structures

These “street-level” officials then select the next level of party officials, usually a district chairman or county chairman.  In large urban areas, like Chicago, there is another level of organization in between the street/block/precinct and the county/district: this is usually called a “ward captain” (a ward is a section of a city: it usually consists of a handful of precincts).  The district/county chairs, in turn, select the state party chairman.  Again, in more complicated systems, there might be a level in between these two (for example, in Minnesota, there are County, State Senate District, State House District, and Congressional District Chairs, but which level selects the next-highest-level officer varies a little between rural areas and urban areas).    The state chairs, along with other members of the state party executive committees (such as the state party treasurer, secretary, vice-chair, etc.), then select the national party leaders (Chairs of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, for example).  The actual titles and the order in which they’re elected may vary a little from state to state, but the basic organizing principle is the same: the national chairs hold their positions because the state-level officers put them there; in turn, the state-level officers are in their jobs because the local grassroots-level activists selected them (regardless of the steps in-between, local party leaders are ALWAYS ELECTED FIRST, and the national chairs are ALWAYS ELECTED LAST). 

 

I want to clarify something about these “party officers”, because this is commonly misunderstood.  These people ARE NOT public officials – they’re not mayors, or state legislators, or county commissioners.  These are every-day people, selected by their fellow party activists to advance the cause and mission of the party (remember that parties, ultimately, are private organizations).  They don’t have any more voting power than you or I do – what they MIGHT have is a little more influence over what the policy platform of their political party looks like, or which candidates are more likely to be endorsed (more on that process later), or which candidates are more likely to be more successful in raising campaign funds. 

 

Because of this “bottom-up” structure, though, those local and state activists DO have some power and influence over the NATIONAL party committees.  For example, when the National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) calls up the Minnesota State Democratic Chairman and says: “Here’s a new get-out-the-vote program that we want you to implement”, the state-level chairman is perfectly free to say: “Thanks, but no thanks”, or, maybe more likely, “Thanks, but we’ll need to tweak your program to make it work here in our local situation.”  This also explains why elected officials in the U.S. often disagree with their party platforms.  Those politicians are nominated primarily by the local grassroots activists, who probably understand better than the national party bosses why, for example, a pro-choice position in rural Minnesota might not work when trying to get elected, or why an anti-public welfare spending position might not work when trying to get elected in inner-city Milwaukee.

 

"Top-Down" Systems used elsewhere

This system used in the US contrasts to that used in most European countries.  There, the National Party Chairmen are selected first (usually through an election of the members of the Parliament/Congress/National Assembly from that party, or by a national convention populated by card-carrying party members.) That’s the other big difference between American-style parties and most European parties – in our system, you might identify yourself as a party member, but there’s no formal “joining” process involving the paying of dues or the issuance of a party membership card which entitles you to special privileges.  Then, those national-level party officials appoint or hire the regional and local party officials.  In a system like this, the local party officials owe their loyalty to the national party bosses.  So, if the national party official says he wants something done at the local level, that local party official is going to do it, because he owes his very existence in that job to the decision by the national party official (in contrast to the “bottom-up” organization described in the US above, this European system is more “top-down” in terms of how power flows from one level to the next).

I have a friend who is a former state legislator in North Dakota; several years ago, he participated in an exchange with regional parliamentary representatives from Australia.  During his trip, he was told several times that in Australia, elected officials are expected to vote on bills according to the wishes and desires of their party leaders: if they don’t follow those orders on a regular basis, they are likely to be thrown out of their party, and not allowed to run for re-election under that party’s label (note that this is not likely to happen if they vote against the party occasionally, but if it happens on a regular basis, or on a very important bill which the leadership considers critical, it could happen). 

Something like this actually happened in 2019 in Great Britain.  Some of you may have heard of "Brexit"; to make a long story short, in 2016, the British public, in a national referendum vote, chose to leave the European Union (so, Britain was "exiting" the EU; hence "Brexit").  Over the next three years, various debates and votes took place in the British Parliament about what the terms of that would look like, and what to ask for in negotiations with the other European countries.  In September of 2019, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, a member of the Conservative Party (sometimes referred to as the "Tories" in the British press) proposed a bill that would allow the country to leave without an agreement from the EU.  Most of his fellow Conservatives voted in favor, but 21 of them, along with all of the members of the other parties, voted "no" (the bill failed, mostly because of those 21 votes).  A few days later, Johnson expelled those 21 members from the Conservative Party (note that he didn't expel them from Parliament; he doesn't have THAT kind of power).   That meant that they couldn't call themselves members of the party anymore; the national Conservative Party wasn't to support their candidacies in the future, and they weren't allowed to attend party meetings with other Conservative Party members.  Eventually, ten of the 21 were allowed back into the party; at the December 2019 elections: four of those ten won re-election as Conservatives - the other six chose not to run.  Of the other eleven, none won re-election (some retired, some ran as independents, and some switched parties).  

 

Here in the US, it would be very difficult to imagine that sort of centralized control occurring, because our “bottom-up” system mitigates against state and national party officers having that much authority (although there is that Tennessee case that's mentioned in the outside readings, but notice that that was the Tennessee STATE Democratic Party Committee making that decision, not some national officer).  When we look at state legislative behavior in a couple of weeks (i.e. how members of the State Legislatures vote on bills and issues), we’re going to find that, in many states, it’s not unusual for divisions in the Legislature to be based not so much on party, but on disagreements between urban and rural legislators, legislators from different regions of the state, legislators from poorer districts versus those from wealthier areas, and so on.

 

US Parties are "Coalitions"

This relates to another issue with U.S. parties: our political parties are broad coalitions of groups who join together under two somewhat vague banners: the Democrats are generally thought of as the “left-of-center” party, whereas the Republicans are generally the “right-of-center” party.  However, as we’ve already noticed above, you can find exceptions WITHIN those parties – there are “conservative Democrats” and “liberal Republicans”.  The European parties tend to be much more ideological (meaning that the party platform is a very significant measure of party loyalty), and voters can assume that if they vote for a Labor Party candidate in Britain (for example), then that person, if elected to Parliament, is going to vote strictly in line with the Labor Party’s platform goals.  There also tend to be more than two parties with legitimate chances to win legislative seats in most European systems.  A lot of this is because of the electoral systems used: that outside reading about "Proportional Representation" provides a good explanation as to why we tend to see more than two parties in other parts of the world.

 

As you read that article, hopefully you'll pick up on something.  Because we use plurality (first-past-the-post) elections, and NOT proportional representation, there's no prize for second place.  Let's say we have three candidates running for a State Legislative seat.  If Smith (the Democrat) gets 40%, Jones (the Republican) gets 35%, and Wilson (the Libertarian) gets 25%, NOBODY got a majority, right?  But because most of our elections are plurality-winner (NOT majority rule), then Smith, with 40% of the vote, wins the seat.  What the larger parties in the US have figured out historically is that they're better off trying to broaden their appeal to voters who might be thinking of supporting a third-party.  What if that Republican (Jones) had campaigned on issues that might have garnered support from Libertarians?  Might some of that 25% who voted for Wilson might have decided to vote for Jones instead, giving him a chance to win?

A quick story on how this actually played out locally here in the Upper Midwest.  Both Minnesota and North Dakota used to have a very strong agrarian, farm-union coalitions of activists and politicians that actually ran for office on a party label OTHER THAN Democratic or Republican.  In Minnesota, this was actually called the Farmer-Labor Party, and it was successful in electing several Governors, Congressmen, US Senators, and legislators in the 1910s through the 1930s.  In North Dakota, this group didn’t form an actual third party, but instead organized itself as something called the “Non-Partisan League”, and ran candidates in Republican Party primaries for many years in opposition to the more conservative Republicans who would win endorsements at the State Convention (we'll talk about Conventions in a little bit). 

 

For the purpose of explaining why the U.S. tends to only have two major parties, the Minnesota example is more relevant.  Over time, the Democratic Party, which was dominated by urban interests in St. Paul for much of this period, began to focus more and more of its platform language and get-out-the-vote efforts on rural and labor issues and voters.  The traditional party members in St. Paul didn’t necessarily disagree with the Farmer-Laborites demands for the right to strike, limits on banking interest, and wage and hour laws, but those weren’t their focus.  The only major issue on which the two parties (Democrats and Farmer-Labor) disagreed on was foreign policy: the Democrats were more internationalist in outlook, and had supported U.S. involvement in the two World Wars; the F-L was more isolationist and anti-war.  By the 1940s, the Republicans were starting to be successful in winning the Governorship and other statewide offices, because the opposition was split between the two other parties.  In 1944, Hubert Humphrey (yes, the same guy they named the Metrodome after, and who would later serve as Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President) negotiated a merger of the two parties into what we today call the DFL (Democratic-Farm-Labor) Party (those of you who’ve voted in Minnesota have probably noticed the use of “DFL”, rather than “Democrat” on ballots and in media stories).  This is a great example of what I was talking about earlier: because we use “plurality” elections (whoever has the highest number of votes wins, not necessarily the majority), it’s to the advantage of groups who generally agree on most issues to work together under the umbrella of one of the two major political parties, rather than try and run as separate entities. 

As an aside, the NPL in North Dakota continued to exist as a separate organization, trying to take over the (at-the-time) dominant Republican Party through the Primary process.  Eventually, they found common ground with the Democratic Party, and formally merged with them in 1956.  That’s why you’ll notice, on North Dakota ballots, that the candidates running as Democrats are formally listed as members of the “Democratic-NPL” Party.  But these are unusual situations.  Historically, it's more likely that these minor parties just eventually cease to exist (rather than formally join one of the larger parties).  The Free-Soilers, the American (Know-Nothing) Party, the Populists, the Greenbackers, the Progressive Republicans: all of these were significant third parties at one time in American history.  In every case, they ceased to exist, and the bulk of their supporters ended up voting for one of the two major parties.

Caucuses and Conventions

We’ve already learned about Primary Elections, which are state-run (and state-paid-for) elections through which the parties pick their official nominees for an office.  The other two concepts we need to learn are caucuses and conventions.  A “caucus” is a town-hall style meeting, where anyone who wishes to attend may do so (the only requirement to participate is that you have to be a legal voter and resident of the precinct, and in some states, they ask you to verify that you do indeed think of yourself as a “Democrat” or a “Republican”).  The purpose of the caucus is to organize the local political party organization: it usually involves the election of precinct captains (so, this is normally the first step of the organizational process talked about before).  In most years, these get very little attention.  However, as was mentioned above, these positions are very significant, because those volunteers who agree to serve as “Precinct Captain” or “District Chairman” for the local Republican or Democratic parties are really the organizers (and key supporters) for the campaigns that are going to be run on behalf of those parties in the local area.

However, these caucuses can be important to the average voter at the state (or even national) level, because they usually also involve the election of delegates to the state (or national) party convention.  In the 2016 Presidential race, for example, where both parties had multi-candidate fields vying for the nomination, you may have seen press coverage of the Iowa caucuses, where cameras followed average citizens into their local church basement, school gym, Elks club, township hall, etc.  Each party held their caucuses in separate locations, with the local party apparatus and leadership in charge of finding the location, organizing the agenda, enforcing the rules, etc.  At the end of the night, the press were mostly interested in which presidential candidates “won” (for example, you might have heard it reported that “In the Republican caucuses, Cruz got 27%, Trump had 24%, Rubio had 23%”, and so on).   However, if you actually watched what these caucuses were doing, you’d see that they were electing local delegates to go on to a statewide Republican convention later on in the Spring.  Thus, they were casting their votes for local people who were committed to supporting one of the presidential candidates further on in the process.  So, what the press was doing was counting the number of delegates elected from each caucus, and who they were committed to, and then declaring a “winner” based upon their understanding of which delegates were going to support which presidential contender. 

Minnesota USED to be classic example of this phenomena: each of the two major parties would organize caucuses in Presidential years (and the off-years, when the Governor is elected), and then activists and campaign staff would try to woo supporters to show up.  However, after the 2016 cycle, the Legislature changed the law, so Minnesota, as of 2020, is now using a stand-alone Presidential primary to select its delegates to the national Conventions (that's the contest that Joe Biden won in March 2020 (beating Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), on his way to becoming the official Democratic nominee.  Minnesota will continue to use caucuses in off-year elections, though (for Governor, Attorney General, Congress, State Legislature).  In those races, these local activists often get elected first as a delegate, and then think about whom they’re going to support later on.  In North Dakota caucuses, the process has been much clearer: voters mark a secret ballot with the Presidential candidate names on it, and then those results are used to determine which Presidential candidates the state’s delegates to the National Convention will support later in the Summer (nobody has to stand on a chair in a corner, trying to lure people to come show support for their choice of candidate).

What those people are all trying to do is get elected as a "delegate" to a local, State, or national "Convention".  A Convention is a party meeting whose purpose is to “endorse” candidates.  These take place PRIOR TO the primary elections, at least when talking about state offices (like Governor, state legislator, Attorney General, etc.)  Only elected delegates may participate and vote, although anyone can attend a convention: they just might have to sit in the balcony or another roped-off area in order to watch the proceedings.  Again, the job of the convention is to endorse the candidate who will then have the support of the party apparatus in the primary.  This doesn’t prevent one (or more) of the losing candidates from running in the primary, it just puts them at something of a disadvantage.

Let’s take the 1998 Minnesota DFL primary as an example of this; three sons of famous Minnesota Democratic politicians wanted the nomination for Governor: they were Ted Mondale (son of Walter, the former Vice President, Senator, and Presidential candidate in 1984), Mike Freeman (son of Orville, the former Governor) and Hubert “Skip” Humphrey (himself the state Attorney General at the time, and son of Hubert II, the former Vice President, Senator, and Presidential candidate in 1968).  Mark Dayton, who at the time was known primarily as a one-term State Auditor and heir to the Dayton-Hudson-Target retail fortune (this was before he was elected U.S. Senator, and then eventually Governor twelve years later), was also vying for the nomination.  At the DFL convention (it was in August that year), Mike Freeman, who had the backing of the AFL-CIO (a huge labor union), won the majority of support of the delegates, although it took several ballots to get him to that point.  From that point forward, Freeman had the support of the DFL party establishment, which meant that paid party staff were committed to getting him elected, the state party chair began holding press conferences and rallies, urging Democrats to support Freeman in the primary, and local DFL party officials were expected (at least in theory, in not in fact) to try and help Freeman gain support in their local areas.  However, Mondale, Humphrey, and Dayton all decided to file to run anyway in the Democratic Party primary in September.  Humphrey still had the support of many rank-and-file DFL activists (who may not have been delegates to the convention, but who were still active in their local communities), and he won the primary with about 28% of the vote.  After the primary was over, Humphrey was now the official candidate of the DFL, so all of those party establishment folks (and staff) had to now switch gears and put all of their efforts into electing him.  Humphrey went on to finish a distant third in the General election.  The second-place finisher was a former DFL Mayor of St. Paul who switched to the Republican Party only a year or so before the 1998 race.  His name was Norm Coleman (who later went on to win a U.S. Senate seat in 2002).  The first-place finisher, and winner, of that 1998 Governor’s race, of course, was a muscular, bald, feather-boa wearing former professional wrestler-turned-politician named Jesse Ventura.

I should note that these State Conventions (like the 1998 Minnesota DFL Convention described here) are very different from the National Conventions that nominate Presidential candidates (the process for nominating Presidents is very different from that for every other office).  In the example above (in fact, in races for EVERY OTHER OFFICE OTHER THAN PRESIDENT), the State Convention can ONLY endorse candidates; in order to be the official nominee of the party, you still have to win the Primary Election later on.  In the Presidential race, the Primaries and Caucuses are held first, and the Delegates to the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention are selected at those Primaries and/or Caucuses.  Then, those National Conventions actually NOMINATE the candidates for President (so, for example, Hillary Clinton’s supporters may have won many of the Democratic Primaries and Caucuses in the Spring of 2016, but she wasn’t the OFFICIAL candidate of the Democratic Party until the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, made up of the delegates who had won those elections in the Spring, actually formally voted to make her the Party’s nominee).