Democrats, took shape during the 1820s and 1830s under the leadership and organization of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Soon thereafter came the Whigs, who served as the loyal opposition for a generation. They crumbled during the 1850s and were succeeded by the Republicans. It’s been those two for more than 150 years now.
Though we take their presence and influence for granted, in many ways political parties are anti-democratic institutions. They are private, extra-constitutional bodies, and their first allegiance is to themselves, not the public good. This partly explains how the Democrats and Republicans have become a well financed, tightly organized duopoloy with a stranglehold on public office.
Historically, the political conventions were a centerpiece of the parties’ anti-democratic behavior. From the 1840s-1970s, political parties largely ignored the U.S. citizenry when nominating candidates to run for public office. National and state conventions were usually dominated by political bosses who negotiated with each other to produce a party slate.
This process is now often romanticized by the image of hazy backrooms filled with cigar smoke and the stench of bourbon, where men in suspenders rolled up their sleeves and went to work. However, the reality is that party conventions represented a de-democratization of American politics.
Political candidates produced by this system were often career politicians who owed their success to powerful, private interests: the bosses who could make or break them by getting them on or keeping them off the slate. For the bosses themselves rarely ran for office, instead reveling in their position as kingmakers. It was a recipe for corruption.
At the local le
vel, things were even worse. Local leaders competed and negotiated to select nominees not for every elected offices, from like mayor and state legislator to the proverbial dog-catcher. Party primaries for these city elections were often held at late hours in unadvertized, hard to find locations. And since the list of favored party nominees was usually negotiated in advance behind closed doors by party leaders, what followed was often little more than a coronation of those decisions.
During the Progressive era (ca. 1890-1917), pro-democracy reformers in the United States began to call for changes. In 1910, Oregon became the first state government to override private political parties. It passed changing how convention delegates were selected. Party leaders now had to select delegates who would supported nominees chosen by Oregon voters. The modern presidential primary had been born.
Eleven states followed Oregon’s lead within two years, though most of them offered voters only non-binding primaries; parties were still free to ignore the results, thereby gutting the primaries’ impact. By the mid-1960s, the number states employing presidential primary elections (most of them non-binding) was still just twelve. Thus, the conventions were still where everything got decided as party leaders from around the nation bargained and bullied to get their men nominated.
When television burst on the scene in the 1950s, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Republican and Democratic national conventions every four years was the norm. And it was mandatory viewing for interested citizens. The cameras never went behind the closed doors where many of the decisions were actually 
made, but nevertheless, the decision unfolded live on TV.
The turning point came with the Democratic Party’s fiasco at their 1968 national convention in Chicago. It’s best remembered for Chicago police beating the living shit out of anti-Vietnam war protesters on live, national television, while the bloodied but defiant marchers repeatedly chanted “The whole world is watching!” But that convention was also important because it provided the impetus for our modern primary system, wherein party candidates are selected by voters instead of party bosses. Democratic incumbent Lyndon Johnson did not run for re-election in 1968 because of his unpopularity over the war. His handpicked successor was Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who gained the nomination from party leaders despite the primary successes of anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy, and the recently deceased Robert Kennedy, shot to death shortly after winning the California primary.
In response to widespread party discontent over this development, compounded by Humphrey’s subsequent loss to Republican Richard Nixon in the general election, the Democratic National Committee created the McGovern-Fraser Commission to assess the situation. It supported the idea of binding primary elections and recommended that the party have more (though not all) of its national delegates selected by its registered electorate. The Republican National Committee soon made a similar recommendation. Not coincidentally, McGovern-Fraser Committee co-chair George McGovern, who was intimately familiar with the new rules, made the most of it to successfully win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. He too lost to Richard Nixon.
Television networks continued to cover the national conventions even though the candidates were now unofficially chosen long before the conventions took place. Consequently, the purpose of the conventions evolved. Instead of selection, the focus now shifted to revelation. Under the glare of television lights, conventions now became the place where major parties unveiled 
their new political platforms and showcased their star politicians, including a crescendo featuring their candidates for the White House.
For the remainder of the 20th century, the quadrennial national party conventions continued to be must-see TV for the politically engaged. However, slowly but surely, the once mighty conventions have lost their luster. Fewer Americans care, and now the major television networks are according a scant three hours of live coverage to each party’s party. They’ve determined that they can garner better prime time advertising revenue by airing the usual fare of crime dramas and sitcoms, some of them repeats. Each convention only got three hours from the major networks in 2004 as well, though slightly more in 2008 amid the excitement surrounding Barack Obama.
Without any meaningful decisions to be made, the conventions have lost most of their pizzaz. And in the modern age of mass communications, they have become tightly scripted and highly predictable events. Aiming to be engaging spectacles, they miss the target by a wide mark, as they’re typically short on surprises, long on dogma, and chock full of frozen smiles, stilted oration, and wooden stage presence. These are, after all, modern politicians, and most of them boast a level of charisma that pales in comparison even to the cast from the reconstituted Hawaii Five-O; a repeat episode of that turgid drama bumped the Republicans from CBS last night. Full coverage of the conventions has long since has been relegated to the mostly partisan cable news channels.
Since their inception, private political parties have done far more harm to American politics than good. Their nominating conventions, which dominated the political landscape for well over a century, epitomized their near monopoly on politics and the corruption that flowed from it. So to the extent that the conventions’ sinking popularity and growing irrelevancy represent a strike against the anti-democratic bulwark of political parties, let us celebrate. However, to the extent that it represents a general decline of citizens’ interest in the political life of the republic, let us mourn, and note that the parties themselves have much to answer for on this count.
Note: A longer version of this article first appeared on Agusust 27, 2012 at 3 Quarks Daily.