Do Parties Still Matter?

Power doesn’t disappear in politics; it moves. We dig into how American political parties migrated from tightly controlled organizations to looser coalitions where candidates build their own machines, then fight for the right to wear the party label. With Henry Olsen—senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a leading analyst of elections and populism—we unpack the long arc from Martin Van Buren’s Albany Regency to today’s primary-driven era, where voters decide nominees and, in practice, rewire party identities.

We start with a clear definition of what a party actually is: a shared brand and a rule-bound way to choose who carries it. From there, we explore how reformers shifted selection power from insiders to primary voters, and why that simple change cascaded through fundraising, messaging, and platform-building. Instead of parties setting agendas, ambitious candidates now read the base, win contests, and make their preferences the party’s default. That’s how Ronald Reagan reshaped Republican priorities—and how Donald Trump mounted a hostile takeover, defeating rivals who still spoke fluent Reaganism.

Henry explains why, despite this hollowing out of traditional machinery, parties remain indispensable. Most people want a trusted shortcut that simplifies complex choices; the party brand provides that. We discuss the benefits and tradeoffs of this new equilibrium: more democratic input and innovation, alongside incentives that can favor intensity over consensus. You’ll come away with a grounded understanding of how primary results translate into platforms, how factions gain dominance, and why no modern democracy functions without parties serving as organizing beacons for voters.

If this conversation gives you a clearer map of how power flows through parties today, tap follow, share the episode with a friend who loves political history, and leave a quick review so others can find the show.

Beyond the Polls: And Election Podcast with Henry Olsen

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Chapters

• 1:34 Meet Henry Olsen
• 2:17 What A Political Party Is
• 3:27 From Bosses To Primaries
• 4:56 The Party’s Powers Shift To Candidates
• 6:27 How Primaries Set Party Identity
• 7:55 Reagan, Trump, And Party Takeovers
• 8:44 Why Parties Remain Essential
• 9:44 Closing And Where To Find Henry

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

Welcome back, everyone. Today we're joined by Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a leading analyst of American politics and populism. A former Washington Post columnist, he is the author of The Working Class Republican and co-author of The Four Faces of the Republican Party, and is widely known for the accuracy of his election analysis. Henry, we are so happy to have you on the podcast today. If you have not already heard the realignment episode from Henry Olsen, I highly, highly suggest it. But today we're talking about political parties and whether they really matter today. So, Henry, thank you so much for coming back. My first question: what is a political party?

SPEAKER_00: 1:35

It's actually changed over time, but it's very simple as a political party is a coming together of people under a common brand and under an organized way of selecting who is going to stand for office bearing that organization's brand to accomplish certain ends. Political parties have changed in their mechanics over the last 200 years. But what unites them is overwhelmingly that, which is that a group of people come together to form a common entity, a party with a common name and a common way of selecting the people who will carry that name before the people. And that means that they are a way of concentrating political effort and simplifying political debate for a voter that wants to be involved but doesn't want to spend 24-7, 365 thinking about politics, issues, and public affairs.

SPEAKER_01: 2:41

So, how are today's political parties different from those in America's past?

SPEAKER_00: 2:48

Originally, America had, and the rest of the world had and still has, a very closed system, which is to say people came together to form this entity called a party. And the party then selected the candidates internally, which is to say, either by a convention or by informal arrangements of local leaders within a certain geographic entity. And then they put a common campaign effort together through the entity of the party. So the person who invented the modern political party is known to as uh now president, but at the time governor, Martin Van Buren of New York, created something called the Albany Regency. And it was the first systematic effect or systematic effort to put together fundraising, candidate selection, campaigning, and governing into one coherent partisan organization under a common brand. That's where the party platform comes from. What's happened today is starting in the 20th century, reformers said this has given way to corruption. The people who create and select the candidates no longer represent the voters' wishes of the people who want to be part of that party. And they started the primary process. And what the primary process is, is formally all it does is take the selection of candidates who will stand for that party's brand away from insiders and puts it with voters in mass government-sponsored elections. But practically what that means is it takes all the other powers away from the political party as well. Because once candidates become empowered to campaign outside of the party structure to gain the right to have the party's brand, they must think about the other things that the party used to think about. They have to raise their own money, they have to decide which issues they want to stand on, which means they form their own platforms. So what we have today is a system where virtually nothing that the Albany Regency did in 1827 is what a political party does today. Candidates do that today. But the only thing that the political party has now is the set of rules by which these people dispute within the party coalition for dominance, battle for dominance, and there, and establish what the party's name is. So political parties as an entity are dramatically weaker than they have ever been, but they remain a potent, important force for organizing and simplifying the questions before the body politic for the average voter.

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

So how do party identities and platforms get created today?

SPEAKER_00: 5:47

They get created today primarily through the disputes that take place in the primary process that establish by the incontrovertible evidence that all active politicians recognize, which is to say the will of the voter. And you see within a political party what the dominant strains are. You see, for example, when candidates, the progressive left, win party primary after party primary, defeating people who represent a different or a less energetic mode of progressivism, that politicians who want to get elected see where their voters are trending and they start to move in that direction. The same thing is true in the Republican Party, which is to say that's what Ronald Reagan did and how he changed the Republican Party, is winning those primaries. And that is essentially what Trump is doing right now. He essentially launched through the primary process a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. 17 candidates are running, 16 represented varying strands of Reaganism. Donald Trump stood apart from that and he trouts them. And then he trouts them even harder in 2024. So, of course, what voters have said is that within the Republican coalition, we want some version of what Trump is telling, not the stuff you are. And consequently, the parties change. Absolutely not. What the political party does is organize and simplify political dispute under an easily recognizable brand for the sort of person who is publicly spirited but is not politically obsessed. There is no country in the world that does not rely on political parties, even as most countries have stronger technical parties that still have the powers of Martin Van Buren's Albany Regency. All of them establish a common brand, a common set of platforms, a way to determine who is going to carry that brand before the body politics. You cannot have a modern representative democracy anywhere without a political party, because the average voter, the person who exercises sovereignty in a democracy, wants that sort of organization and simplification. If parties were not present at the founding, they quickly came into being because the people who act in politics found they could not win elections without them.

SPEAKER_01: 8:28

Thank you so much. Again, much like the last episode we did, taking this, it feels like a very large topic of political parties and just to sealing it down for us to make it more understandable. Henry, again, thank you so much for your expertise on this podcast, on the realignment podcast. We have very much enjoyed having you as a guest on Civic Center podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 8:55

I've enjoyed talking about it, and I hope people will follow my podcast beyond the polls.

SPEAKER_01: 9:00

Yes. And if you are looking for that podcast, it will absolutely be in our show notes.