Very interesting points here, which among other things suggest that regardless of how badly last week’s debate hurt Biden’s chances, Democrats don’t really have the institutional capability to pick someone else.
If you decide after delving into the data that you need to warn “Democrats” about something and you give them a call, it turns out there’s nobody picking up the phone. Of course, the DNC and RNC do exist and they have staffers in the building who will literally pick up the phone. But the party committees don’t amount to anything. Neither do the quadrennial national conventions. Neither do the state parties. We have a lot of partisanship, but that’s largely negative partisanship, not affective affiliation with the party you usually vote for. The parties barely exist as institutions, but beyond that, even to the extent that they exist as a loose constellation of related entities, those entities lack social legitimacy and can’t steer events.
That presents itself most obviously in the spectacle of willfully nominated unpopular presidential contenders. But it arguably has more dire implications in terms of the difficulties it creates for setting priorities and making political decisions — if the public’s desires and interests can’t be constructively channeled through political parties, then we’re more likely to ping pong between stasis and demagoguery.
Democracy needs political parties, and the United States of America doesn’t really have them.
