Parties to the Present

For Monday:  Hershey, ch. 3, 4.

Recap:  things are about to end the four-party system.

• The Cold War will end with the closing of the USSR on Christmas Day 1991.
• Reagan signs immigration reform (with amnesty!) in 1986.  lmmigration will increase.
• Educational attainment and the new class.
• A recession dooms Bush in 1992.  The paradox of the fortunate fall:  as Gingrich said, the outcome represented a "liberation from the tentacles of the Bush administration."  Presidential parties lose seats over time.

Party organizations as service providers: more next week.

DLC (275) and Clintonism 



DLC fades with the disappearance of conservative Southern Democrats. Democratic share of Southern (CQ def) House seats

87th Congress (1961-62).....93.4%
103d Congress (1993-94)....61.6%
104th Congress (1994-96)...48.8% -- Gingrich
115th Congress (2017-217)..28.0%

African Americans: the Democratic nominating wing.

Meanwhile, back at the GOP...

Governing Team Day - a little-remembered foreshadowing of what was to come

 Reflect on the Rosenfeld and responsible parties:  Newt on Governing Team Day, Congressional Record, September 8, 1980, 24683

A wide range of political scientists including James McGregor Burns, Frederick Sonntag, Manning Dauer, Jack Saloma and others, have urged steps to strengthen the party system. There is a growing consensus that a weak party system leads to irresponsibility, to single issue politics and to domination by special interests. Furthermore, there is a growing belief that personality politics focused on individual candidates heightens irresponsibility and the lack of accountability

Rep. Dan Lungren (next page):

Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman has pointed out to us the significance that we hope to establish with respect to our activities on September 15. Whatever the failings that the parliamentary systems of European democracies may have, they are superior to our more loosely knit representative system in one respect: That respect the gentleman has referred to as accountability.

When a British worker goes to cast his vote for his representatives in the House of Commons, there is little doubt in his mind as to which party to hold accountable for the current state of affairs in his country. But here in our country, where legislators are responsible for myriad constituent services; where regional, State, and ethnic identities are strong; where members of the legislative branch are not structurally tied to the Chief Executive of their own party, the accountability for the current state of affairs tends to be blurred in the minds of the citizenry.

1994: Contract with America

Iron law of emulation: "From 1995 to 2006, Republicans in control of Congress took the centralizing the discipline-bolstering tactics pioneered by Democrats and dramatically expanded their use" (Rosenfeld 271).  More when we get to party in government.

Hollowness of parties (284): Weak parties and strong partisanship

Another look at polarization in PIE

Violence "woke communists"