Don Pesci: Weak political parties weaken politics

William Tweed, in 1869, the legendary boss of the Democrats’ Tammany Hall machine, in New York City, after the Civil War.

VERNON, Conn.

Even though no member of “the squad” – Democrat congressional Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts – is participating in the national Democrat presidential primary debate now underway, the drift of Democratic politics post primary has been set by them and, of course, Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders. Primaries bring out political extremists who, along with a 24-7 media, set the party narrative.

Before primaries became common in both parties, candidate selection was made by party bosses in smoke-filled back rooms, and eccentrics in the parties were allowed their 15 minutes of fame during national conventions. Party bosses disappeared long ago; more likely, they have gone underground. And national conventions are now regarded as prime-time political shows, essential for generating campaign funding and spreading political gospels through sympathetic media outlets. Over the years, party conventions have lost their sharks’ teeth.

If we are asked today who determines which presidents or governors will represent their parties in general elections -- who, in other words, are the real political bosses? – we are told the people rule through a democratic election process, a laudable goal but a laughable exaggeration. In both primaries and general elections, voters simply affirm choices made by other now shadowy figures operating behind sometimes opaque political veils.

When the sturm und drang of the primaries have abated, selected representatives of both parties, national and state, tend to drift once again towards normalcy, in popular parlance “the center.” We have developed a political language to describe this gyrating pendular motion. In primaries, political contestants are said to be appealing to “their base.” Democrats these days appeal to progressives, and Republicans appeal to conservatives, the devil take the hindmost. In general elections, convention nominees twist themselves into pretzel shapes to appeal to the “center” of the party, which today is in motion.

What happens when the center moves right or left? Mass hypocrisy and confusion ensues. The only political “sin” recognized the world over by media adepts is hypocrisy, usually punishable by a caustic few paragraphs in a quickly forgotten editorial. It used to be thought that hypocrisy is “the compliment vice pays to virtue.” Hypocrites of old doffed their hats to virtue – of course one should always tell the truth and shame the devil, but sometimes the greater good of the party requires one to explore a heavily nuanced path – in the very act of committing the only sin recognized by a diminishing media luxuriating in the pockets of some favored interest or arcane ideology.

“Trust nothing in politics,” said Otto von Bismarck, “until it has been officially denied.” That is a useful maxim for journalists to follow, but following it requires a politically imprudent break with “transactional journalism” as understood by Sheryl Attkisson, let go from her job at CBS because her employers had become the willing servants of ambitious politicians.

So then, the modern journalist is working within a system in which a now unfamiliar evil, the much misunderstood party boss, has been replaced by shadowy political elements: super PACs, Ivy League-educated political consultants, former “objective” reporters and commentators employed by powerful incumbents, bloggers of every stripe and hue, furious twitterers, masked Trotskyites, deep-pocketed billionaire short-traders whose personal fortunes prosper in the chaos and darkness they create in order to make their billions, ivy league professors who relish the destruction of their own universities, not to mention the foundational ideas that have sustained the good old USA through the Revolutionary war, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, a newly hatched progressive Democrat Party, eupeptic conservative Republicans and what Julian Benda used to call “La Trahison des Clercs,” the treason of the intellectuals.

There are lots of twists and turns in the political maze, more than a hatful of cogs and spinning wheels. Many of the Wizard-of-Oz-like backstage political shakers and movers mentioned above have learned how to manipulate the party system, primaries, the campaign-finance system, and even conventions. Political parties, especially in one-party hegemonic states, have sloughed off traditional functions such as the generating and dispersing of campaign funds, now performed by candidates themselves. Political parties are much weaker than they were when bosses ruled the roost. The most recent gubernatorial contest in Connecticut featured two millionaires, neither of whom have had deep roots in politics. Incumbents are able to generate massive campaign funding; their competitors, forced to rely on tax supplied funding, not so much. This is one of the many reasons incumbents, safely locked into gerrymandered districts, are, in the absence of term limits, so difficult to dislodge.

Don Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon, Conn.