Why Parties No Longer Control American Politics

Time: “This is the dawn of the outsourced campaign. For decades, elections have been the business of candidates and political parties and the professionals they employed. But changes in campaign-finance law have atomized the game and sapped the power of party bosses. In a new era marked by unlimited political money, everything from data mining to digital strategy is now increasingly controlled by a band of outside hit squads waging proxy wars.”

“By Election Day 2014, interest groups across the ideological spectrum will have raised more money, run more TV ads and played a greater role in selecting candidates than in midterm elections past. Elected officials, and the parties they control, matter far less… To the outsiders, the migration of money and influence away from the party machines has made the political process more accessible to more people. It has also made it tougher to hold anyone accountable and to track the sources of the cash flooding into elections–and it has made it harder for lawmakers to govern.”