Granted, this has become harder to do over the years, especially as conventions have become more TV-centric and prepackaged. And that will likely be particularly true this year given the pandemic. Even if nothing is actually decided at the conventions, they still shine a spotlight on the parties, illuminating emerging factions and up-and-coming politicians, setting the stage for — and creating — the future of each party. Nor did it prevent the nominee, Harry Truman, from winning the actual election.
But it did foreshadow the gradual loss of power of the Southern faction within the Democratic Party. Similarly, in , the Republicans went into their convention deeply divided, with moderate and liberal Republicans on the one hand and a growing conservative faction that supported Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater on the other. When New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller , one of the liberal old guard, spoke on the floor against extremism, convention delegates booed.
Of course, Goldwater was resoundingly defeated in November, but the lasting impact of the convention was an emphasis on party unity in post-election discussions, and in the selection of the next RNC chair. Over time, conventions have become more scripted and less spontaneous, making it harder to produce unexpected moments like the memorable events of and The Democratic convention had some tense moments between Sen.
Donald Trump thrives with an audience and channels their enthusiasm into his work. Those have been critical pieces of their political personas, and I expect they will want to get back to them as soon as safely possible. Are there fights over party platforms this year? ZBW: One of the less-covered but more interesting elements of a convention is the party platform. Is there anything you think people should know about party platforms this year? AL: The Democratic platform is always a source of contention, and team Biden is furiously trying to ease some of that friction.
Followers and a significant amount of delegates of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have moved the party left since Hoping to avoid the fights at the convention, Biden's convention teams created "Unity Task Forces" to work with Sanders supporters to make policy recommendations for the platform committee.
US elections, explained. While this won't soothe everyone, it was a real effort on Biden's part to reach out to Sanders voters and delegates. Normally, there would still be some sort of floor fight over the platform at the convention. It seems highly unlikely given the technological logistics of the Democratic convention. Perhaps a small upside to the all-virtual convention for Biden. On the Republican side, as could be expected with an incumbent president, there aren't any changes this year.
That caused a problem because the Republican National Committee voted to keep the platform that bashed the "current president," which was not Donald Trump when it was drafted in Either way, there won't be any significant changes from the GOP. Where are these things happening? ZBW: Democrats were supposed to be holding their convention in Milwaukee and Republicans are holding theirs in Where are Republicans holding theirs?
Few have taken advantage of the opportunity as well as Barack Obama in , when the relatively unknown Illinois Democratic state legislator delivered an indictment of political polarization. The keynote address helped propel him to the White House four years later. Both party candidates usually benefit from a small bounce in opinion polls after their prolonged exposure at conventions, but the effect is often short-lived and the bounces have gotten smaller as U. Polling averages compiled by the American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara show Democrat Hillary Clinton received a 2-percentage-point bounce and Trump a 3-point bounce after the conventions.
Candidates and citizens alike despised this undemocratic system. But how should parties figure out who to nominate? Though the nominee, William Wirt, only won seven electoral votes in the national election and the party lasted little more than a decade, the idea almost immediately was taken up by the two major political parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, forerunners of the Republicans.
In theory, they gave the American people more say in the political process by shifting the nominating responsibility from Congress to state delegates who would vote on the candidates at a national convention. But in reality party insiders controlled these proceedings, too, as they were valuable opportunities to meet and exchange both information and political favors.
Conventions could be dramatic, boisterous affairs, and issues like slavery split parties into bitter factions. In , for example, the Democratic convention had to hold 49 votes before two-thirds of the delegates could agree on a compromise candidate, pro-slavery Franklin Pierce.
Presidential candidates like Pierce instead followed along by telegraph, which Samuel Morse had invented in the s, and responded to the nomination with hometown speeches and acceptance letters. Though it now became easier to predict frontrunners, party bosses retained considerable power at the conventions—and presidential candidates still stayed home. Things began to change with the dawn of radio and with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a New York Democrat who had spent over a decade honing his reputation as a skilled speaker stumping for other candidates at political conventions.
During his first presidential campaign in , Roosevelt broke with tradition, flying to Chicago to address delegates in person. Roosevelt missed the nominating conventions for his third and fourth terms in and —by choice in and after that due to World War II strategy sessions—and delivered radio addresses remotely instead. In , his acceptance speech was also broadcast on television , the first time a political convention utilized the medium.
But the precedent had been set: Since , every presidential nominee of a major political party has attended the convention and accepted the nomination in person. Though more states switched to primary elections over the years, party bosses still occasionally managed to work around the will of voters.
In , the Democratic National Convention descended into chaos after Hubert Humphrey, a candidate who had not participated in a single primary race—concentrating instead on non-primary states—clinched the nomination due to backroom dealing by political bosses.
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