There are two other changes in the political culture that I think will make a return to parties especially difficult. One is the way we've come to embrace neutral administration. Rosenblum describes the historical roots of anti-partisanship, which kind of gets at this idea. But now several generations of Americans have grown up with a fairly extensive administrative state and with a Hatch Act that regulates political activity among federal employees.
For people under 40, we've also only ever known a political world with another layer of post-Watergate sunshine reforms. We expect that official party organizations will be neutral in nomination contests and can't accept that the rules might be designed to favor certain types of candidates because the party thinks that's how it can achieve its main goal: winning political office.
If the broad cultural expectation is that broad participation and neutral administration are necessary to make something legitimate, then, as much as it pains to me to say it, those ought to be taken into consideration in how party politics works. This could be a good opportunity to reform the election system, including nominations, in ways that are badly needed. Some uniformity across states and some updated technology would serve us well.
