Nathan Newman wrote:
>The US essentially has 435 separate parties loosely affiliated, but with
no
>party discipline.
-What about the cash the national parties hand out? And the network of -funders they provide access to?
The national parties help but are probably not a significant portion of any candidates funding. As for the "network of funders" they give access to, many of those funders are unions, pro-choice or other progressive groups that are not controlled by the DNC either. One effect of McCain-Feinfold is that even less money will be coordinated by the national party committees; progressive donor groups are setting up their own coordinating groups to hand out money directly.
Here's a challenge-- name a single Congressperson who has ever been sanctioned in an effective way by the Democratic National Committee? I can name a number who have been challenged by unions or corporate or other non-party groups, but I can't think of any that have been punished specifically by the party organs themselves.
There is essentially ZERO party discipline exerted in that way. Within Congress, party discipline is occasionally enforced by promising or denying chairmanships of pork barrel goodies, but that would apply to any candidate of any party name once elected; it's the normal quid pro quo of every legislature in the world, regardless of whether it's a multi-party proportional system or a two-party first-past-the-post system like the US.
Most party discipline is exerted from the grassroots, not from D.C. Congresspeople don't really care about the call from DNC headquarters but do care about the calls from back home. And those calls are more partisan and uniform district to district across the country than they once were, largely because Southern Democrats are now overwhelmingly responsible to black or increasingly latino rather than white primary constituencies, much like urban Dems in the North. There has also been a homogenization of cultural polarization of constituencies between the parties around issues like abortion and the environment.
In many ways, the most interesting political story of the last thirty years is the rise of real NATIONAL political parties for the first time in US history.
--- Nathan Newman