Trump and American Political Parties

Trump illustrates the weak nature of our parties.

Fox News Republican Debate LineupI have been meaning to write a series of posts on what political science can tell us about Donald Trump.  Time has constrained this goal, although I have made some passing comments on polling and Trump in the last several weeks.   One of the factors that I think is interesting about the Trump candidacy is that it illustrates the candidate-centered nature of our political parties and especially underscores the weakness of those parties in terms of candidate selection.   I do not, by the way, use the term weakness to make a negative assessment of the situation, per se (although one might normatively decide that the weakness in question is problematic, especially in this case or, depending on your views of Trump, one might think the situation to be perfectly awesome).  Rather, the weakness in question is simply an empirical assessment of the institutional capacities of our parties to control their labels i.e., control who calls themselves a Republican or a Democrat—something I have written about before:  All Republicans are RINOs (and all Democrats are DINOs).

In our system the parties do not control the labels.   Anyone can be a candidate for nomination under a given party and any candidate can, a la Trump during the first debate, hold out the possibility of running as an independent (or on a third party ticket).  Further, the official conferral of the label for the purpose of being on the ballot belongs to primary voters, not party bosses.*

My time to go into this in great detail remains limited, but one of the great things about the internet is that if one waits around long enough, someone else is likely to write about the topic one lacks the time to address.  As such, I recommend Boris Heersink’s post at the Monkey CageHow does the Republican Party solve a problem like Donald Trump?  wherein he concludes:

Trump’s candidacy has perfectly exposed the inherent weaknesses in the design of modern American political parties. In earlier times, party bosses would have easily been able to sidetrack Trump at the national convention. But these bosses are long gone. The RNC, while it is more active now than was in the age of the party bosses, does not have the formal powers to exclude candidates from the party; it can only try to persuade Trump to tone it down. And party elites, while usually able to signal which candidates are acceptable and which are to be ignored, do not have the tools to constrain Trump.

A party system managed by relatively weak gatekeepers can be a good thing. After all, it means that voters have the freedom to select the representativesthey want, even if their party’s leadership disagrees. But such weakness comes with inherent risks for the party: once in a while, you can end up getting Trumped.

Indeed.

Note that the answer to the headline question is:  nothing without radically restructuring its candidate selection process.

(I do still think, however, that time solves that problem).

The whole piece is worth a read and makes a number of points worth pondering.

*This is wholly true for all partisan offices save the presidency.  For the presidency the technical conferral is via party convention, although the power to control the convention rests in the caucus and primary voters.

FILED UNDER: 2016 Election, The Presidency, US Politics, , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Ron Beasley says:

    When the Party elite become so out of touch with the Party voters sh*t is eventually going to hit the fan and we are seeing this in both parties this year.

  2. @Ron Beasley: I think this remains to be seen. If Trump gets the nomination, then we have a different discussion on our hands. I still maintain that we have to take his candidacy in the context of a highly fragmented field.

  3. Pinky says:

    This is all thanks to Nixon. His name came out of the smoke-filled room 5 times.

    The interesting thing is that in some countries, the parties aren’t separate entities at all. They just coalesce around individual candidates.

  4. Ron Beasley says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: I’m not saying that either Trump or Sanders are going to win, I doubt that they will.

  5. Kylopod says:

    @Ron Beasley: @Steven L. Taylor: The whole elite vs. masses thing is wildly overblown. For example, in 2012 the elite didn’t choose Romney while the masses chose someone else. The fact is that when most Republican voters came out to vote, the majority chose Romney over the alternatives. (Yes, I’m aware it was mere pluralities originally, but if you took the total votes in all the states, you’d find Romney had a pretty solid lead.) Of course Romney was the one with the money, but what did he use the money for? To air ads persuading voters to vote for him and not to vote for his rivals. (And for GOTV, and so on.) Furthermore, it was the right-wing media that largely took down candidates like Cain, Perry, and Gingrich, pointing out their incompetence and ideological heresies. The voters listened because, let’s face it, that’s what voters do, for the most part. Then they shake their fists at the damn “elites” for having anointed the candidate they supposedly didn’t want.

    Now, I’m not saying that the nomination process is perfectly representative of voter opinions or that money doesn’t distort politics. Of course it does; as a matter of fact, I think the nomination process for both parties sucks and could use some fairly massive reforms. But we still are a long way from the old days where nominees were selected in the so-called “smoke-filled rooms”; the fact is that voters do have a lot of say in the matter, and to the extent that elites still control the process, it has a lot to do with the fact that elites have a strong influence on the voters themselves, because most voters are a lot more persuadable than they will care to admit.

    Furthermore, the term “elite” can be misleading because it tends to conjure up hoity-toity intellectuals or at least the “official” groups like the RNC. The fact is that Fox News and talk radio are among the elites in GOP politics today, however much they may disparage the term, and they help shape the opinions which drive Republican voters. They’re part of the engine behind the Trump phenomenon in the first place; it wasn’t a case of GOP voters just deciding on their own to support the billionaire celebrity.

    People who rage against “elites” should look in the mirror from time to time.

  6. @Kylopod: For what it is worth, I am not raging against elites (and I use the terms here specifically as it pertains to persons in leadership positions in the parties).

  7. Kylopod says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: I wasn’t talking about you but about Republican voters I’ve been hearing over the past few years acting like Romney was the choice of “elites”–as if to suggest that he was chosen over the consent of the voters. Listening to these people, you’d think it was 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt won most of the primaries but the party elders chose to ignore the results and stick with Taft. In reality, what happened was that at the end of the day, most Republican voters chose Romney because they were told to. If they don’t like the results, they’ve got no one to blame but themselves.

  8. @Kylopod: Gotcha.

  9. Scott F. says:

    I don’t think you can talk about the current weakness of the parties in terms of candidate selection (the GOP in particular) without bringing up Citizens United. We’ve yet to see how unlimited dark money is going to come into play through the nomination process. The RNC is truly outmatched when it comes up against the oligarchs.

    Trump is working with his own funds and he’s managing to smack the party leadership around at will. For the most part, the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson haven’t yet joined the game. I foresee an unholy mess.

  10. gVOR08 says:

    @Kylopod: Basically agree, but let me add a couple of comments.

    The Rs have in fact largely succeeded in redefining “elites” as “hoity-toity intellectuals”. Within the TP universe Trump and the Koch Bros are not “elites”. But anyone who I suspect looks down on me is. Hence a billionaire like Trump is one of us fighting the elites. Go figure.

    Yes, you are right that voters chose Romney and McCain and that they were persuaded by the party’s elites. (The actual elites, the ones with money and control.) However I fear the difference between the process being controlled by our elites and controlled by voters persuaded by our elites is a distinction without a difference. Saw an article a couple months ago about a paper arguing that modern autarchies do exactly that. They don’t have secret police and rigged elections, they have ostensibly open processes and elections, but they control the media. (No time to look for a link.)

  11. Kylopod says:

    @gVOR08: My point isn’t so much to argue that there’s a real difference as to point out how deluded rank-and-file Republican voters are when they act like they’re independent thinkers being oppressed by “elites” who don’t represent their views. The fact is that they do listen to elites–they just don’t call them by that name.

    The real way the influence of elites will be refuted won’t be by nominating Trump–it will be by nominating Jim Gilmore.

  12. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Kylopod:

    The real way the influence of elites will be refuted won’t be by nominating Trump–it will be by nominating Jim Gilmore

    .

    Amen.

    Ps, my comment is not spam, FYWP.

  13. dazedandconfused says:

    Just an embellishment to the OP, not intended to criticize anything or anybody, but check out the nomination of James Garfield for contrast.

    Primaries served a purpose but they weren’t mistaken for elections back in the day. We once openly harbored doubts about populism but now only a very brave or very stupid politician would suggest The People might not be the font of all wisdom.

  14. Ben Wolf says:

    @Ron Beasley:

    I think both Sanders and Trump will be the party nominees. Between Clinton’s health and the trouble she’s already in this early I don’t see her lasting until summer; Trump is simply the most interesting and (so far) brightest in the Republican field with an amazing capacity for turning negatives into positive support.

  15. @Ben Wolf: I would be totally, utterly shocked at that outcome.

    That truly strikes me as beyond the realm of any reasonable probability.

  16. Ben Wolf says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: I expect this campaign to be a Black Swan event because both parties are running on fumes and their leaderships widely detested. Yes, the probabilities are low but only until they aren’t. What I’m seeing on the ground is a wholesale breakdown in capacity of our “traditional” political institutions to maintain their control and a major shift in post-war political landscape.

  17. Ben Wolf says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: Plus, when Hillary drops out it’s Sanders by default. Trump shows no obvious weaknesses his opponents can use to marginalize his support and is probably too smart of do it for them a la Cain, Perry and company. If he’s serious then he can’t be massively outspent, either. They can’t dispose of him and so are stuck with the man.

  18. Ben Wolf says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: Interesting post on Trump here: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/08/must-must-must-read-lee-drutman-at-vox-on-the-shape-of-the-electorate.html

    I’ve thought since he announced his candidacy he understands the voters better than any Republican candidate since Reagan.

  19. @Ben Wolf: Well, I have no reason to assume Hillary will drop out–and should she do so, other candidates will likely emerge (all of which is an unlikely scenario).

    Trump is the leader of a fragmented field at the moment and I remain unconvinced that he is the second or third choice of a large number of voters currently supporting other candidates. I may yet be proved wrong on this count, but I doubt it.

    And yes, I read that Vox piece and it is interesting. I guess I am less convinced that it shows a recipe for a Trump nomination.

  20. Turgid Jacobian says:

    @Ben Wolf: Oh, you have a feeling do you?

  21. Ben Wolf says:

    @Turgid Jacobian: What does that even mean?

  22. Ben Wolf says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: I think Clinton was lucky not to get the nomination in 2008. Deserved or not I think the Republicans would have had a field day beating her up and I don’t think her health this time around is likely to be up to much punishment. So far her campaign has consisted of hiding behind concertina wire and occasionally emerging to do a fundraiser or a heavily-scripted event with no surprises and this can’t last forever. She’s hoping to coast to the nomination and I just don’t see it happening. Sooner or later she has to come out into the open and when she does I expect the pressure to be too much.

  23. Turgid Jacobian says:

    @Ben Wolf: that the things you think you see on the ground are not in any way to be more predictive of reality than anyone else’s anecdotes.

  24. Kylopod says:

    @Ben Wolf:

    I’ve thought since he announced his candidacy he understands the voters better than any Republican candidate since Reagan.

    It actually is irrelevant whether he “understands Republican voters,” because that’s not why Reagan won the nomination. As Harry Enten noted a few months ago:

    “Reagan had 51 endorsements from party actors through March 1979. This included five senators, 23 House members, two state party chairs and one governor. Weighting for the position of the endorser (i.e., senators count for more than representatives), Reagan had an astounding 90 percent of endorsements by party officials at that point.”

    So Reagan was actually the prime choice of elites, unlike a certain Trump. As usual, the “elites vs. the masses” story turns out to be myth.

    And this is one topic where it is absolutely true that “both sides do it.” Many Dems tell a very similar story about Obama–that he was a grassroots candidate beating the “establishment” choice, Hillary Clinton. In reality, elites were basically divided between Obama and Hillary that year. For example, Obama actually got slightly more endorsements from his fellow Senators than Hillary did.

    I know the “masses rising up against the elites” makes for a nice story, but at some point we need to grow up and realize Santa ain’t real.

    Sanders is not Obama. (And I say that as a Sanders supporter!) And the Donald is not the Ronald. (Even if he’d make a good punchline in a Back to the Future reboot.)

  25. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    I still see Trump as a “dog chasing a car” situation. I can’t imagine Trump giving up his chosen profession–uber-rich self-promoting bloviator–in order to turn over his control of his businesses to serve as President. He’s not altruistic enough.

  26. Andre Kenji says:

    @Kylopod: People forget this cover from Time magazine:

    http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1967/1101671020_400.jpg

    That´s from 1968. Reagan was always part of the Republican establishment.

  27. @Ben Wolf:

    So far her campaign has consisted of hiding behind concertina wire and occasionally emerging to do a fundraiser or a heavily-scripted event with no surprises and this can’t last forever. She’s hoping to coast to the nomination and I just don’t see it happening.

    At the moment she has no reason to be hitting the campaign trail hard. This is largely expected behavior for a candidate in her position. I am not sure why you are drawing the conclusion that it is predictive of anything.

  28. Ben Wolf says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    At the moment she has no reason to be hitting the campaign trail hard.

    Yes, this is how the complacent and arrogant tend to behave. Which is why she should be hitting the campaign trail.

  29. Ben Wolf says:

    @Turgid Jacobian:

    that the things you think you see on the ground are not in any way to be more predictive of reality than anyone else’s anecdotes.

    Did anyone suggest otherwise? This is looking more like some personal concern on your part than a response to what I’ve written.

  30. Turgid Jacobian says:

    You wrote: “What I’m seeing on the ground is a wholesale breakdown in capacity of our “traditional” political institutions to maintain their control and a major shift in post-war political landscape.”

    Why is what “[you’re] seeing on the ground” any more connected to what is actually happening than good ‘ol Noonan?

  31. @Ben Wolf:

    Yes, this is how the complacent and arrogant tend to behave. Which is why she should be hitting the campaign trail.

    No, it is how the clear front-runner behaves in a relatively small field at this time in the process. The first vote is not going to be cast for roughly half a year. We are getting the GOP sideshow at the moment because there are 17 candidates (and one of them is putting own his own reality TV show for us all, amplifying it all).

    I am not defending Clinton as a person nor am I trying to boost her candidacy. I am simply pointing out what behaviors are reasonable to expect at this point in the process and what the most reasonable interpretation is of those behaviors in light of history and the rules of the game.

  32. Ben Wolf says:

    @Turgid Jacobian: I wasn’t aware it needed to be. It’s an opinion.

    @Steven L. Taylor: I’m not suggesting you have engaged in any sort of advocacy or bias toward or against Clinton nor was my comment intended to accuse you of arrogance, rather the Clinton campaign itself. I’m just presenting the possibility that, to borrow a phrase, this time is different. I’m also suggesting that Clinton, given decades of conservative animosity, cannot count on any crossover appeal and will of necessity be forced to go for the equivalent of a 50 + 1 victory unless she makes a vigorous go at a fifty state strategy, pronto.

    My read on Sanders is that he has significantly more appeal to self-identified conservatives than conventional wisdom suggests and therefore represents a greater threat to Clinton than is generally recognized. To date her people appear to believe that Clinton’s approval numbers among minorities and women can’t be overcome but that’s a reflection of the Democratic party having written off half the country as unwinnable. They should be looking at the considerable time Sanders is spending in Red State territory with concern, not dismissal.

  33. gVOR08 says:

    @Ben Wolf:

    I think Clinton was lucky not to get the nomination in 2008.

    Any Dem would have beaten any Republican in an election a couple months after the economy blew up under a GOP prez. I’ve always felt McCain did way better than he should have. Most credible estimate I saw said that being Black cost Obama as much as 6%. I think Hillary would have done better.

  34. Liberal CapitalistLiberal Capitalist says:

    My comment, for what it is worth…

    I have come to understand the popularity of Candidate Trump:

    He is the Zaphod Beeblebrox of American Politics.

  35. Kylopod says:

    @gVOR08:

    Most credible estimate I saw said that being Black cost Obama as much as 6%.

    That would mean the Dems would otherwise have gotten about 59% of the popular vote, the highest for a non-incumbent since 1920–higher even than Hoover’s percentage in 1928, FDR’s in 1932, and definitely Reagan’s in 1980. (Reagan got less than 51% in a three-way race, and about 55% between just him and Carter–and the evidence suggests Carter would have done a little better if Anderson hadn’t been in the race.) Color me a little skeptical.

  36. al-Ameda says:

    @Ron Beasley:

    When the Party elite become so out of touch with the Party voters sh*t is eventually going to hit the fan and we are seeing this in both parties this year.

    I certainly do not think that the Republican Party elite is out of touch with the Republican Party masses.

    Both McCain and Romney were nominated because primary voters and convention delegates thought that those two guys has the best chance of winning in 2008 and 2012 respectively. Really, who else would have done better? Santorum? Palin? Gingrich? Cain? Pawlenty? Anyone else come to mind? Following the last two elections many Republicans complained that their nominee was not sufficiently conservative to win. It’s the usual after-the-fact buyers remorse, and I’m not buying it.

  37. @Ron Beasley:

    When the Party elite become so out of touch with the Party voters sh*t is eventually going to hit the fan and we are seeing this in both parties this year.

    I thought a bit more about this: really part of the point of the weakness of our parties and the importance of the candidate selection process we have is that if there is a serious disjuncture between party elites and the mass, the mass wins. If Trump, for example, wins the nomination, he will have the power to reshape party leadership (not the other way around, which is the point of the post, actually).

  38. (And again, by weakness I mean the lack of control by central party leadership to influence candidate selection and to control campaigns).

  39. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @Ben Wolf:

    @Turgid Jacobian: I wasn’t aware it needed to be. It’s an opinion.

    I find it intriguing that even though “It’s [only] an opinion” you’ve come back to challenge assaults on it 4 times now. Curious…

  40. Ben Wolf says:

    @Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker: You find it strange to defend an opinion?

  41. @Ben Wolf:

    I’m just presenting the possibility that, to borrow a phrase, this time is different.

    On one level, it is always possible that this time it is different, but the probability of being as radically different as you are suggesting strikes me as really, really low.

    The notion, for example, that self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders (who is, at a minimum, a northeast liberal) has the capacity to make inroads in conservative red states strikes me as fanciful, to be honest.

    It is far more likely that Trump can ride nativism and economic populism to the GOP nomination than it is that Sanders is going to winning over conservatives.

  42. @Ben Wolf:

    You find it strange to defend an opinion?

    Speaking for myself, you are more than entitled to your opinion (and to defend it). However, you are coming across as basing your position on nothing more than gut feelings (and that is not especially persuasive).

  43. Ben Wolf says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: I never claimed any special knowledge which makes it so strange I’m accused of assuming special knowledge. The arguments I have presented are by definition logical and their outcomes logically possible and that’s all I intend.

    Arguments such as “I find that implausible” differ only in degree. I am arguing a lower probability outcome and you are arguing a higher probability outcome. Both are “gut feeling” arguments in the end because the future is uncertain.

  44. @Ben Wolf:

    Both are “gut feeling” arguments in the end because the future is uncertain.

    This is where we differ because I think that some arguments can be made from patterns of the past even if they are not (obviously) clearly predictive. Further, I think some claims, while theoretically possible, can still be rejected out of hand because of lack of evidence or in the face if counter-evidence.

    I other words, the level of probability matters even when looking to the future. It is possible that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will win the Super Bowl next season insofar as the future hasn’t happened yet, so who know? However, argument for that eventuality are harder to swallow than arguments that, say, the Green Bay Packers will win it.

  45. Ben Wolf says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: But that’s the difference in risk and uncertainty. Risk (likelihood) of an outcome is something that can in theory be probabilistically modeled; uncertainty cannot be modeled, Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns as a colloquial example. The global financial crash of 2008 was missed by probability models because it was too complex and did not fit past data patterns. What happens when a model assumes conservatives won’t vote for a socialist in a primary and misses that many conservatives hold left-wing economic ideas borne of the last seven years? Well, the model explodes because in the end it can only be as good as its assumptions. My position is the common assumptions about the state of American politics are now of very low quality and will undermine the probability models that proclaim this or that is inevitable. Why do I hold that position? Because I make an effort to get out and talk with people and find their thinking much less predictable than the charicatures I hear described on a daily basis. A conversation captures data that can’t be isolated from survey questions which are dependent entirely upon how the questions are asked and can’t follow up on the answers.

  46. Turgid Jacobian says:

    Because I make an effort to get out and talk with people and find their thinking much less predictable than the charicatures I hear described on a daily basis. A conversation captures data that can’t be isolated from survey questions which are dependent entirely upon how the questions are asked and can’t follow up on the answers.

    That brings back the reason I commented above. It is surely fine to cast aside the position that we can draw lessons from the patterns we’ve seen, however incomplete. But you have to replace it with something. You’ve chosen to replace it with what you’ve drawn from conversations with folks around you.

    Well, unless you’ve been spectacularly systematic and mind-blowingly catholic in your conversational partners, that’s the same kind of evidence that people like Peggy Noonan and Pauline Kael used to generate their predictions.

    I’m sorry that wasn’t clearer when I commented above.