American political parties are loose associations that lack any kind of formal structures. The two parties stretch across three broad categories — the electorate, the party organization in place to facilitate the campaign, and the government. None of these parts of the party is formally connected to any other part, and even within each category there is not a great deal of coherence. Within the government, there is a party in the House and a party in the Senate, totally distinct from each other as well as from the state legislative caucuses. Similarly, in the electorate, “Republicans” and “Democrats” identify that way entirely of their own volition. There are no rules or parameters to govern party identification. Being part of the Republican party is entirely unlike being part of the AARP, where you pay a fee in exchange for the benefits of membership. In fact, the party coalitions are so loose that it was only recently that being associated with a political party really said much about your political beliefs — as little as 40 years ago there were prominent liberal Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and conservative Democrats like John Connally.

The mainstream media does not like this, for it makes its job more complicated than it would like. The MSM prefers a unified command and control structure, so that it can go to the top and get a quote or interview from the “leader” of each party. For the party that currently occupies the White House, that task is easy enough. But for the party that doesn’t reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the task is much trickier because there really isn’t a leader.