Parties I

For Wednesday:

Jonathan Rauch, "Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy," Brookings, May 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/political-realism-rauch2.pdf      

PIE/PO/PIG/POG

"Great Parties"

Tocqueville (175): “What I call great political parties are those more attached to principles than to consequences, to generalities rather than to particular cases, to ideas rather than to personalities... America has had great parties; now they no longer exist”

In a 1793 letter to Madison, Jefferson laid out the battle lines on France, but really describes the embryonic first party system:

The line is now drawing so clearly as to shew, on one side, 1. the fashionable circles of Phila., N. York, Boston and Charleston (natural aristocrats), 2. merchants trading on British capitals. 3. paper men, (all the old tories are found in some one of these three descriptions).

On the other side are 1. merchants trading on their own capitals. 2. Irish merchants, 3. tradesmen, mechanics, farmers and every other possible description of our citizens.

Party in the Electorate (PIE)

History

• A cinematic map of presidential voting
• 1896 and 2000

Historical party affiliation  (Party registration and

•  party affiliation or identification are not the same thing)  
• Independents and "leaners"
• Recent trends
• Party coalitions

RELIGION AND THE PARTY COALITIONS

GEOGRAPHY

Party in Government (PIG)

• Party Divisions in the House
• Party Divisions in the Senate
• State Government Control 

Party Organization (PO)

Party Outside Groups (POG)