III.                  The National Party Structure Today

1.       In today’s governments, each level of gov’t (federal, state, local) exists on its own, with little or no organization, and all are practically independent of each other.

2.       Democratic and Republican parties do look alike, since both have national conventions that meet every four years to choose a presidential candidate, national committees that manage party affairs in between elections, and congressional campaign committees that help their members of Congress running for re-election, and national chairmen who manage the day-to-day work of the parties.

3.       In the 1960s and the 70s, Democrats became a factionalized party while Republicans became a bureaucratized one, and after Republicans won four of the five presidential elections from 1968 to 1984, Democrats decided that the Rep. way of doing things was better and emulated them.

                                                               i.      The Republicans had used computerized mailings to build up huge files of people who had donated money to the party and used that list to make a big budget for itself.

a.       In 1983, the Republican National Committee (RNC) raised $35 million from over 1.7 individual donors, and by 1994, the RNC, Senate Committee, and Congressional Committee had raised $246 million from 2.8 million donors.

                                                             ii.      The RNC used this money to run the party and help its candidates, and later, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) used the same strategies to raise money for its party.

a.       By law, national parties can only spend $12 million on presidential candidates, but by sending money to states to help the candidates, the law was bypassed.

b.       RNC money also goes to taking polls to see what the people are concerned about.

                                                            iii.      In 1996, Republicans and Democrats redoubled their efforts to raise soft money, or funds to aid parties and their ads and polls, but President Clinton and VP Al Gore were caught funneling illegal funds into these fundraisers…

4.       Party conventions are chosen, and then the place has to be selected; for years, Democrats and Republicans have been split over where to put a convention, since the area near the convention is likely to have its opinions addressed more solidly, since more people there can go to the conventions.

                                                               i.      The Democrats have been split between South and West/North while Republicans are befuddled between East and South/Southwest.

5.       The way people who attend these conventions are chosen is very complex, but the Democrats have recently tried to make the field more diverse and equally representative of minority groups, etc…

                                                               i.      The rules have been altered many times, but basically, they aim for intraparty AND interparty democracy: men and women delegates must be equally divided; “goals” of minority races must be established and addressed; selections procedures must be open; 75% of the delegates must come from the congressional district of lower; there is a limited number of party leaders and elected officials who can vote at conventions; all delegates pledged to a candidate must vote for that candidate.

a.       As a result of these rules, more senators and representatives became delegates.

b.       These “superdelegates” helped elect Walter Mondale.

6.       After a while, Democrats decided not to change the rules and put on a mask of uniformity to cover the turbulent faction that lied beneath the skin of the party.

                                                               i.      Still, people like Jesse Jackson protested that the rules made it harder for candidates like him to win delegates in proportion to their share of the primary vote.

                                                             ii.      The response was more rule changing: winner-reward systems were banned; proportional representative system was put into use; rule-violating states lose 25% of their delegates.