I find this Steve Bailey article bizarre. Set aside the fact that the U.S. is probably alone among democracies with a weak party system. (U.S. voters don’t belong to the Democratic party in the way a Brit can belong to the Labour party, or a German to the Christian Democrats, etc.) If we approached politics as pure consumer choice, in the manner Bailey suggests, there wouldn’t be the need for political parties at all, except as some sort of brand candidates could adopt or not. Now, political parties do have their dysfunctions, and at the very least have institutional qualities that distort the political process. Nonetheless, the party structure emerged for positive reasons as well as negative.
None of this is to say the Democratic party should be conducting its convention rules as it currently is - or that Democratic rank and file shouldn’t actively question party protocol. But ultimately, the choice of the primary and nominating process is the party’s. If a candidate is shut out of the primary process, he or she is free to run as a third-party or independent candidate. If this seems like a naive response, then perhaps the pure consumer choice isn’t so unrestrained after all.
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