Americans did not set out to weaken political parties. The opposite impulse drove reform. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, reformers sought to make nominations more democratic, more transparent, and more responsive to ordinary voters. Party elites, smoke-filled rooms, and backroom deals felt illegitimate in an age shaped by civil rights, Vietnam, and Watergate. The cure seemed obvious: open the process.
The unintended consequence proved far more consequential than the abuse it aimed to correct.
By democratizing primaries, reformers quietly dismantled the institutional structures that once restrained candidates, aggregated factions, and translated public passions into governing coalitions. What followed was not simply more democracy. What followed was candidate entrepreneurship, ideological fragmentation, and a political system increasingly vulnerable to demagoguery and short-term emotional appeals.
To see the shift clearly, it helps to begin before the reforms.
When Parties Owned the Ground Game
Before 1968, presidential nominations remained largely party-managed affairs. Voters mattered, but parties mattered more. Delegates were selected through conventions, caucuses, and party committees. Candidates did not build parallel organizations; they relied on existing ones.
In that system, legitimacy flowed from institutions. Party leaders bore responsibility for coalition maintenance, electoral viability, and long-term governance. Ambitious figures needed party trust before they earned voter attention.
Dwight Eisenhower’s rise illustrates the model. Eisenhower did not assemble a personal ground game in the modern sense. Republicans recruited him. The party activated its networks. The campaign emphasized national reassurance rather than ideological mobilization. Eisenhower owed his nomination and election to party confidence, not grassroots fervor.
This structure dampened extremism not through virtue, but through friction. Parties absorbed passions, filtered candidates, and forced compromise before the general election ever began.
Goldwater and the Fault Line
Barry Goldwater’s 1964 nomination exposed a weakness in that system. A highly motivated ideological faction learned how to capture delegate processes through superior organization and discipline. Goldwater’s supporters did not represent a majority of Republicans, but they represented the most engaged subset.
The party lost control of its own machinery. Many leaders recoiled. Reformers concluded the process itself lacked legitimacy.
The solution was democratization.
1968 and the Inversion of Responsibility
The McGovern–Fraser reforms transformed presidential nominations. Primaries became binding. Delegate selection shifted toward mass participation. Party leaders lost formal gatekeeping authority.
What changed was not simply who voted. What changed was who built the organization.
After reform, parties no longer managed nomination infrastructure. Candidates did.
Candidates now bore responsibility for:
- fundraising
- volunteer recruitment
- turnout
- message discipline
- organizational survival
Parties became shells. Candidates assembled temporary parties around themselves.
Legitimacy migrated from institutions to personalities.
Carter: The First Entrepreneurial Nominee
Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign demonstrates the new logic. Carter was not carried by the Democratic Party. Carter built his own organization state by state. He optimized early primaries, cultivated volunteers, and converted momentum into delegates.
Carter did not defeat party elites. He bypassed them.
That strategy worked under the new rules. It also permanently altered incentives. Candidates learned that ideological clarity, emotional resonance, and volunteer enthusiasm mattered more than institutional endorsement.
Reagan’s Lesson
Ronald Reagan’s 1976 challenge to Gerald Ford showed the tension mid-transition. Ford retained institutional advantages. Reagan possessed movement energy. Reagan lost narrowly.
By 1980, Reagan combined both. He reassured party leaders while harnessing activist enthusiasm. Reagan succeeded not by restoring the old system, but by mastering the new one.
The lesson stuck.
Why This System Favors Demagoguery
Once candidates must build their own ground games, politics changes structurally.
Time horizons shrink. Volunteers mobilize around feelings, not five-year plans. Structural reforms lose to emotional narratives. Ideological intensity beats coalition breadth. Moderates free-ride. Activists dominate.
Demagoguery does not emerge because voters become foolish. Demagoguery emerges because the system rewards candidates who can rapidly assemble emotional followings without institutional mediation.
Parties once filtered anger. Candidates now run on it.
The Tragic Irony of Reform
The reformers’ impulse was sincere. They expanded participation. They increased transparency. They responded to real abuses.
They also dismantled the very institutions that once converted democratic energy into republican governance.
The result is a system rich in passion and poor in restraint. A system that rewards near-term intensity over long-term structural goodness. A system where legitimacy is earned through mobilization rather than stewardship.
Primaries did not merely change who chooses nominees. They changed what kind of candidates succeed.
And once that change took hold, the republic began to sound louder—without necessarily governing better.
Disclosure: This essay was developed with the help of ChatGPT. The machine helped organize the ideas; the blame for the conclusions belongs to me.
