Why do we even need political parties anymore? I understand that it was harder to transfer information back in the day, and so politicians aligning with parties

Why do we even need political parties anymore? I understand that it was harder to transfer information back in the day, and so politicians aligning with parties made things easier. Now that we have the internet and media, all parties seem to do is serve as a marketing brand that politicians can hide behind. Without parties, each candidate would have to run on their own views, rather than defaulting to whichever side they want to win over. Trump might be the biggest example, a liberal elite from NYC who ran as a Republican because he saw a weakness in the candidate pool there, and knew he could hide behind that R to gather votes. It's just lazy and serves as more of a tool to manipulate the populace than it does to inform.