The Massachusetts Republican Party is going through yet another of its meltdowns, as the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld and Contrarian Boston’s Scott Van Voorhis report. How bad is it? The state GOP had only $15,000 in its campaign coffers as of the end of October, as Scott notes. That’s roughly the value of three used Chevy Aveos. Can the party ever right itself? Well, it hasn’t righted itself for more than a generation now. In fact, the party has actually contracted the more it’s tried to expand. Only 8.3 percent of the state’s registered voters now call themselves Republican.  But here’s the thing: Democrats may control every major elected office in Massachusetts, but only 25.7 of state voters call themselves Democrats. There’s something going on here besides Mass. GOP incompetence and Mass. Dem dominance by default.

That brings me to Indrees Kahloon’s new piece in the Atlantic “Political Parties Have Disconnected from the Public.” Read it. I found this quote from the late Irish political scientist Peter Mair, author of Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democray, particularly spot on:

“The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.”

Sound familiar? …