Tis the Season . . . for STUPID!
I’m sorry, anyone who thinks there could be a brokered convention in this or any election cycle for either party is being a moron. Michael Tomasky tries to cover himself by admitting
I know — every four years, some wit writes a brokered convention scenario. It’s always tortured.
then goes on to explain that his tortured reasoning (that forms the bulk of the column) makes 2008 “unique.” (Via Yglesias.)
Here’s what’s not unique. It’s not 1952 any more. Both party leaderships have an overwhelming imperative to keep their conventions from being at all “interesting.” Both party leaderships have an overwhelming imperative to get everything lined up by early summer to effectively compete with the other guy. On the Democratic side especially, all the major and minor candidates are young enough to want to preserve their viability for future runs, which means not pissing off the party leadership, including that army of consultants which has all too much power in the Democratic Party.
Brokered conventions are a romantic relic of America’s political past for a reason. Nobody wants them except journalists.
Comment by Doug M. —
April 20, 2007 @ 5:25 am
Jim, I respectfully disagree.
Yes, there are very powerful institutional imperatives that will push for a clear decision long before the convention. But the new, front-loaded primary makes it just-barely-possible to get a configuration that could defy these pressures.
It would require rolling triple sixes, to be sure. A party would have to
1) come out of Super Duper Tuesday with no clear front-runner; and,
2) go through the next couple of rounds and STILL have no clear winner emerge; and,
3) have nobody willing to be a good loser, give in and end the standoff.
To be clear: I don’t think any of this will happen. I suspect we’ll know the nominees long before the cherry trees have started to bloom along the Potomac.
But I think it could, yeah. IMO the new primary schedule has raised the chance of an “interesting” convention from something like 1 in 1000 to more like 1 in 100. Still not likely, but could happen.
I admit I think a contested convention would be cool, and so may not be objective.
Two other things. One, this:
“all the major and minor candidates are young enough to want to preserve their viability for future runs”
does not strike me as correct. McCain is not going to have another chance. Biden is 65. Giuliani is 62. Clinton, Romney and Richardson will all be 60 this year. The median age for accession to the Presidency is 55, and only two Presidents have been over 65 on taking office.
Add either four or eight years to those ages, and you can see that a lot of these guys won’t be back.
Two, it’s not just about age or the lack thereof. Edwards won’t have another chance after this, and at least one other candidate — naming no names — strikes me as the sort of SOB who’d hang on out of sheer mean-spirited stubborness.
Again, I think you’ll be right in the event. Just sayin’.
(BTW, has any presidential election generated this much buzz this early? We’re still 19 months away. It’s kinda whack.)
Doug M.
Comment by FMguru —
April 20, 2007 @ 5:38 am
Yeah, it’s one of the Old Reliables of campaign coverage. Two others include:
1) Trying to come up with a plausible scenario for a tie in the Electoral College, or for nobody to get 50% and it all gets thrown into the House. Like the brokered convention, it never happens but it always gets buzzed about.
(Side note: Lord knows there are worse things wrong with the EC, but would it have killed them to make it so that there’s an odd number of votes, thus eliminating possible ties?)
2) The trailing campaign declares that polls don’t mean anything, just remember Truman/Dewey. Campaigns bringing up 1948 are pretty much making a concession speech, in my experience. Media coverage mentioning 1948 is the equivalent of sports play-by-play guys trying to keep listeners around during a blowout, telling tales of improbable comebacks and “no lead is safe”.
Comment by dbomp —
April 20, 2007 @ 7:13 am
Another brokered convention scenario: The clear front-runner flops just before the convention. Dies. Is caught with dead girl or live boy. Has leprosy. Is identified in old porn, or worse, new.
Without a clear second-choice or sufficient time for the major powers to settle on a new candidate, I could see the convention become very interesting.