IT'S OUR PARTY:

We're at the point in both parties' presidential nomination cycles where people are starting to notice the anti-democratic aspects of the system. Bernie Sanders' backers are furious about superdelegates and closed primaries. Donald Trump's supporters are angry that state party leaders can award delegates to Ted Cruz without voters' approval. Do we need to fix this system? Or do we need to make an affirmative case for its merits?

In a recent post at Mischiefs of Faction, Julia Azari argued that we need to re-think the way we talk about parties. Political scientists have been arguing for generations that parties serve a important public good and that party leaders should be afforded some deference in picking good nominees. The public, meanwhile, has largely bought into the Progressive Era narrative that parties are, at best, a necessary evil and that they need to be run democratically. 

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