Here's a fact: progressives are a minority in the Democratic Party. Or, at least, a minority of its voters. This is true for a variety of reasons that are far too many and too complicated to fit inside a single blog post. It's a great way to start a related conversation, though: moving on from traditional party machine politics.

Political parties arose out of a desire of the few who organized them to leverage numbers into votes and therefore power. That's it. Until recently it was arguably a good if flawed model. Consider the two biggest difficulties any candidate for office faces: fundraising and getting voters to know and trust him or her well enough to vote. Both problems are solved by parties.

Parties help with fundraising by maintaining a network of wealthy and connected individuals ready to donate for the cause. Party identification makes it relatively easy for a candidate to substitute the party's brand for his own. Voters who care about and trust that party affiliation means something don't even have to get to know candidates. They'll simply vote for the candidate running under Party X's banner. Seems like a great win-win scenario: the party helps the candidate with money and brand-recognition, and in return the candidate is expected to help the party by reciprocating when he has the power. Nothing is perfect, though, and there are serious flaws with this system.

One is that, as with any organization, political parties are susceptible to domination by an elite and ambitious few, who are generally also connected to the wealthy "private" citizens at any given level of government. Rules are easily updated to make protection that centralized power a priority (it's similar in concept to the reason behind gerrymandering). Another is the corrupting influence of money. It wields power over people through a sense of reciprocity (people feel an obligation to 'return the favor' to a person who gives them something). When it is concentrated into a single organization, that organization can use it to support its causes--and deter challengers, even if the challengers are generally in agreement with the organization's mission.

In political parties these influences have combined over the decades to produce organizations that resemble the Guardian Council of Iran with respect to candidacies for office there. They have come to represent not choice in elections but as a closely guarded Gate through which only carefully vetted, "acceptable" persons may pass. And this is hurting our democracy. It doesn't have to be that way, though.