The Party Decides Quotes

“On the surface, it therefore appears that voters choose the nominee by choosing convention delegates in their state primaries and caucuses. But the appearance is deceiving because, as we have suggested, party insiders use the invisible primary to coordinate behind a preferred candidate and to endow that candidate with the resources and prestige necessary to prevail in the state-by-state contests.”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“It is instructive to observe these great men at the solemn business of selecting a First Chief for the greatest free Republic ever seen on earth. One hears, in their speeches, such imbecilities.... One sees them at close range, sweating, belching, munching peanuts, chasing fleas. They parade idiotically, carrying dingy flags and macerating one another's corns. They crowd the aisles, swapping gossip, most of it untrue....
The average delegate never knows what is going on. The hall is in dreadful confusion, and the speeches from the platforms are mainly irrelevant and unintelligible. The real business of a national convention is done down under the stage, in dark and smelly rooms, or in hotel suites miles away. Presently a State boss fights his way out to his delegation on the floor, and tells his slaves what is to be voted on, and how they are to vote. (Cited in Hinderaker 1956, 158)”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“The average delegate never knows what is going on. The hall is in dreadful confusion, and the speeches from the platforms are mainly irrelevant and unintelligible. The real business of a national convention is done down under the stage, in dark and smelly rooms, or in hotel suites miles away. Presently a State boss fights his way out to his delegation on the floor, and tells his slaves what is to be voted on, and how they are to vote. (Cited in Hinderaker 1956, 158)”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“The traditional instrument of party control, the party nominating convention, was eviscerated by reform. Hence, party insiders must now exert themselves by informally coordinating behind a preferred candidate and providing that candidate with the support necessary to prevail in the state-by-state primaries.”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“To summarize: The reformers of the 1970s tried to wrest the presidential nomination away from insiders and to bestow it on rank-and-file partisans, but the people who are regularly active in party politics have regained much of the control that was lost. Control rests on their ability to reach early agreement on whom to support and to exploit two kinds of advantage-control of campaign resources (money, knowledge, labor) and the persuasive power of a united front of inside players. Insider control is not unshakable, but it has usually been sufficient to the task at hand for some two decades.”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“An important argument of this book, however, is that parties try, via
the candidates they nominate and elect, to pull policy toward what their interest and activist groups want, even if that is not what most voters want.”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“Parties also must work together in order to succeed. If the coalition splits into competing factions, each pledged to a different candidate, voters become the real power by choosing between the insider-backed candidates. This happened in 2008 but is not the modal pattern.”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“These party insiders used the results of primaries to gauge the popular appeal of the leading competitors, but in the end they chose as they saw fit.”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“This was possible because the leaders of the Democratic Party controlled enough delegates to the nominating convention to choose whomever they wished. The opinions of voters in the primaries could be safely ignored.2”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform

“One continually hears the declaration that the direct primary [for legislative offices] will take power from the politicians and give it to the people. This is pure nonsense. Politics has been, is, and always will be carried on by politicians, just as art is carried on by artists, engineering by engineers, business by businessmen. All that the direct primary, or any other political reform, can do is affect the character of the politicians by altering the conditions that govern political activity, thus determining its extent and quality. The direct primary may take advantage and opportunity from one set of politicians and confer them upon another set, but politicians there will always be so long as there is politics. (Cited in Key 1965, 394-95)”
― Marty Cohen, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform