| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. For those of us who study the presidential-nomination process, the most important outcome of the 2020 Democratic campaign was that it yielded further evidence that the system rewards coalition-style candidates and penalizes factional ones. But perhaps it's worth going back and talking a bit about what exactly a factional candidacy is. Nelson W. Polsby, in his 1983 book "Consequences of Party Reform," called a faction "a group acting through a political party in pursuit of a common interest." Factions per se aren't a bad thing; in fact, "factions, by providing a political focus for the expression of the perceived needs of citizens are by virtue of that fact fundamental entities in any complex political system." In other words, Polsby was following James Madison's definition of a faction in Federalist No. 10, in which Madison noted that they were a natural outgrowth of freedom and politics. For Polsby, the trick is to give these "fundamental" building blocks incentives to form "alliances among groups organized for the purpose of achieving goals common to their constituent parts" — that is, coalitions. When that happens, people are able to work together and find mutually satisfactory solutions to public problems, and will learn to do so as a matter of course. The outcome is a politics that can have many winners. To be sure, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be no losers; a large winning coalition can still lock out groups that aren't included. But it's a good start toward a healthy political system. That only happens, though, if factions have strong incentives to form coalitions, and are unable to win on their own. For Polsby, the nomination and presidency of Jimmy Carter was a warning about the weakness of a system dominated by primaries. As a factional candidate, Carter was rewarded for differentiating himself from the others, and never learned the bargaining and compromising skills that presidents need to be successful; instead, he learned that rallying his strongest supporters was the way to win. Carter wasn't thought of as a factional candidate, partly because we tend to use that label for ideological politicians (such as Senator Bernie Sanders). But Polsby saw a candidate who cultivated a personal, individual connection with voters, rather than one who worked for the support of the various groups that made up the party. Carter's candidacy, and then his presidency, were dominated by a group of loyalists, many from Georgia, who had limited political experience outside of their shared dedication to Carter's career. It's easy to see Sanders as a similarly factional candidate. Yes, he added some aides in his second campaign who had broader ties within the party network, but he also had a lot of staffers and highly visible supporters who were actively hostile to the Democratic Party (more so, indeed, than Sanders himself). It's important to see Donald Trump, in 2016, as a factional candidate as well. That doesn't mean that Trump didn't appeal to a lot of Republican voters. But he was institutionally very separate from the party. For the most part, he didn't reach out to its various groups. Instead, he presented himself as who he was — just as Carter did in 1976 — and hoped that what he was selling would appeal to a sufficient number of voters. Of course, Trump won the nomination, while Sanders has been defeated twice. I've argued that Trump won despite being a factional candidate for a number of flukish reasons but also because the 2016 Republican Party was dysfunctional enough to provide him with an opening. Sanders differs from Trump in many ways, but the Democratic Party appears to have been functional enough to defeat his factional candidacy. And if that's correct, if the current system really does reward coalition-style candidates such as Joe Biden (and Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and John McCain), then perhaps there's some reason for optimism about one important part of the U.S. political system. Perhaps. 1. Julia Azari and Seth Masket on the nomination process. 2. David Malet at the Monkey Cage on whether people will trust the government when they're told it's safe to return to normal. 3. Richard Blumenthal and Josh Chafetz on oversight of the relief bills. 4. Greg Sargent on Trump acting as if he was in charge. 5. Jonathan Chait on the internal conflicts that eventually produced the Trump administration's strangely vague health guidelines rather than an actual policy. To be sure: This was a case in which inaction was a lot better than running off in the wrong direction. 6. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Faye Flam on what doctors are learning about treating the coronavirus. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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