What Jim Hoagland is noticing is the breakdown of political parties as a meaningful way to organize politically. In the United States we have put legal obstacles in the way of strong parties, giving an incentive to form more and more narrow interest groups and for politicians to essentially operate as "free agents." Some reforms that will help and also never pass:
1. Allow parties to once again raise money in unlimited amounts.
2. Allow parties to coordinate more easily with candidates.
3. Move away from primary elections and replace them with caucus systems. This would have to occur state by state and it as likely to become law as it is for me to end up playing center field for the New York Yankees. But we need to give the political party organizations more power in selecting their own nominees.
4. Yes, narrow initiative, referendum, and recall laws so that the power of legislation is in the hands of legislators responsible to parties as opposed to giving legislative power to the general public who are organized via interest groups.
People will organize to influence the government to their own self-interests. That is what democracy is. The question is how they will organize. The best way is for them organize into large broad based political parties that can make demands on politicians. Otherwise people will organize into interest groups or, worse yet, around individual charismatic leaders. Neither of those two phenomena is edifying.
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