How well do parties operate? 291Moreover, concerted action by members of a party in government may be aimed at
political rather than policy goals. In recent years, both Democrats and Republicans
have decided against bipartisan compromises, believing that standing their ground
would help them gain seats in the next elections. This strategy helped Republicans
gain seats in 2010 and 2014 and was one factor behind the Democratic resurgence in
the 2018 midterms. In this way, the electoral imperatives faced by American political
parties can work against the enactment of effective responses to public problems and
increase, rather than decrease, the amount of conflict in American politics.Providing Accountability
Finally, parties can improve American democracy by acting as an accountability
mechanism that gives citizens an identifiable group to reward when policies work well
and to punish when policies fail. However, while individual legislators are happy to take
advantage of party labels when being held accountable works in their favor, they will do
everything they can to avoid being tied to an unpopular party. Republican legislators,
for example, highlighted their party label in the 2010 election, as the party was much
more popular than the Democratic Party at that time.^39 But in 2018, when the party
brand was much less popular, many Republican incumbents emphasized their work as
individual members of Congress on behalf of constituents and tried to stay as far away
as possible from their party’s unpopular image.
When politicians work to secure their own political future by deemphasizing their
party affiliation, they make it harder for voters to use party labels to decide who should
be rewarded and who should be punished for government performance. The result
is that legislators are held accountable for their own performance in office, such as
how they voted—but no one in Congress is accountable for large-scale outcomes such
as the state of the economy or for foreign policy. Of course, attempts by officeholders
to disassociate themselves from their party are not always successful, which is
why Republicans lost their House majority in 2018. Even so, most Republicans and
Democrats in Congress managed to survive these elections, suggesting that party-
based accountability is rather weak in contemporary American politics.The 2018 midterm elections were
described by experts as a referendum
on President Trump’s agenda. After
two years in office, it was the first
opportunity for voters to hold the
administration accountable. In
this divisive political environment,
many Democrats ran campaigns
emphasizing their opposition to the
president. Incumbent senator Amy
Klobuchar (D-MN), who had taken a
leadership role in opposing President
Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh, among his other policies,
won reelection by 24 points.Full_09_APT_64431_ch08_262-295.indd 291 16/11/18 1:41 PM