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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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If it happens this way it would essentially make the Dems a semiparliamentary party, one where a gaggle of congressional and ideological leaders can force out a sitting president on a relatively short notice despite not actually having the backing of primaries or anything like that for it, quite like Truss, for instance, was forced out of Tory leadership on short notice after the economic shock. Republicans, meanwhile, are now in uncommonly strong grip of their nominee, at least if these reports are be believed, with Trump easily steamrolling whatever religious conservatives there are to completely rewrite the party's language on abortion and SSM.

Which is a better way to lead a party? Dunno, but the Republican model, with its forceful leadership, would probably seem the more popular one, especially when talking about a singular executive who is expected to possess forceful leadership in general.

If it happens this way it would essentially make the Dems a semiparliamentary party,

They already sort of are. In contrast to the Republican Party where the regional and state committees are largely seperate and operate independently of the national party, the Democratic Party's structure is much more "top-down" with the national chair holding power of the purse and an outsize influence over both the convention and the primary process. If you dont believe me, just ask a "Bernie-Bro" how they feel about superdelegates some time.

I mean, to be fair, they did undo a lot of the superdelegate system afterward because of exactly these kind of complaints. But yes the Democrats tend to be more centralized, at the very least since the Obama years, where that same centralization turbocharged a lot of their fundraising. I have no idea how much it may or may not predate that point.

This is also itself a reflection / downstream of how the primary Democratic Party machines are based on relatively centralized City Machines, which tend to dominate state politics, but also themselves the have (relatively) clear power differentials. The NYC political node and the California nodes, by virtue of their monetary influence for the rest of the power, have a degree of leverage over the lower party organs via patronage networks that the Republican Party lacks due to the decentralization.