RealClearPolitics - HorseRaceBlog - Delegates to Dean: Make Us

RealClearPolitics - HorseRaceBlog - Delegates to Dean: Make Us

The very, very limited power of national political parties is why the head of the DNC can't mandate an end to the Clinton/Obama contest: "...[T]he imposition of the Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA) of 1972, and the 1974 amendments that limited the amount of money that candidates could collect from individuals... gave the national parties a new task - legal money laundering. This is their essential function today.... The powers of the state parties were handed over to candidates for office, not to the federal parties. The role of the parties now is essentially to serve the electoral needs of those candidates."