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The manner by which the two major U.S. political parties nominate their candidates for president dominates popular political discourse every fourth winter and spring. For students of American politics, however, virtually all of the seasons in between are filled with discussions of this most partisan activity. No less a scholar than Boss Tweed observed, "I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating."
Since the birth of our modern nominating system in the aftermath of the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention, political scientists have written countless books and articles seeking to recount the history of nomination politics, explain the outcomes of nomination battles, or propose reforms to the current system. Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process is an edited volume that attempts to do all three through the lens of the hard-fought, bitterly contested 2008 Democratic and Republican presidential nomination contests. Despite some unevenness among the selections, a reluctance in places to engage new scholarship in the area, and the danger of drawing broad conclusions from one election cycle, the work succeeds in providing a worthwhile overview of presidential nomination politics.
Ever since the McGovern-Fraser Commission radically altered the way presidents are nominated, debate has centered on the entities that have the most control over the outcome of the process. Prior to McGovern-Fraser, nobody could seriously doubt that party elites held the ultimate power to decide who would represent their side in the general election. Elites would attempt to come to a compromise on the candidate who best represented the core ideals of the party and who was most likely to achieve victory in November. In the aftermath of McGovern-Fraser, a debate raged as to how much power had been taken away from the party elites and what entities might have stepped into that vacuum. In the first few postreform contests, scholars noted the increased role played by the voters, the media, and the...