Most Americans don’t know this: in 1988, the Republican and Democratic parties fired the League of Women Voters — the neutral, nonpartisan organization that had hosted Presidential debates for decades — and replaced them with a commission they run themselves. Many Americans only tunes in to politics during the runup to a Presidential election, which means the Presidential debates are often the pivotal events in the race.
When that organization — the Commission on Presidential Debates, or CPD — was founded it was jointly run by the chairs of the Republican and Democratic national committees. It existed, in practice, to protect the two parties that created it.
