“…parties used to drive media attention by signaling to reporters which candidates to take seriously”
Money turned out to be much less important to winning primaries than anyone thought...
…because parties are necessarily alliances of disparate constituencies, political scientists have mainly regarded them as a healthy way of counteracting the power of single-issue interest groups. It’s hard not to wonder about an account in which a party is captive to interest groups at some moments but not at others.
Nicholas Lemann, “Evening the Odds,” The New Yorker (23 April 2012), 73.