But, currently, Republican primaries are largely democratic and Democratic primaries are at best a marketing period in which their membership makes no binding decisions. Compromise with the tea party forced Republican primaries to democratize, which eventually ended with the party being forced to accept Trump as a candidate against every wish of party insiders. Democrats have "superdelegates," and a ton of other ways to fix the primary, and have gone to court to establish legally that they have no obligation to run it fairly or honestly.
The same sort of democratization happened to British Labour under Ed Miliband, which culminated with the election of Corbyn as leader. In order to fix the problem, they had to purge and expel anyone from party membership that had any sort of firm value system.
Democrats don't have that option in the US, because in the US, people aren't members of parties; they're people who have registered to vote in that party's primary, or people known to have supported that party in the past. US corporate parties have employees, not members. Getting a portion of the public to participate in their primary is the closest thing they have to rallying the membership, and the way that both parties have written election law makes it difficult for them to change anything, or to prevent anyone from voting in them.
The same sort of democratization happened to British Labour under Ed Miliband, which culminated with the election of Corbyn as leader. In order to fix the problem, they had to purge and expel anyone from party membership that had any sort of firm value system.
Democrats don't have that option in the US, because in the US, people aren't members of parties; they're people who have registered to vote in that party's primary, or people known to have supported that party in the past. US corporate parties have employees, not members. Getting a portion of the public to participate in their primary is the closest thing they have to rallying the membership, and the way that both parties have written election law makes it difficult for them to change anything, or to prevent anyone from voting in them.