{"id":1472,"date":"2004-07-27T22:50:15","date_gmt":"2004-07-28T02:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/07\/27\/why-are-conventions-such-a-boring-a"},"modified":"2004-07-27T22:50:15","modified_gmt":"2004-07-28T02:50:15","slug":"why-are-conventions-such-a-boring-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/07\/27\/why-are-conventions-such-a-boring-affair\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are conventions such a boring affair?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s what’s going on (with some help from my friends (only one has a web presence<\/a>) who study the development of the American political system.<\/p>\n

Lots of the bloggers here have noted that the DNC is pretty
\nboring.  It is.  Really.  Right now, a variety of
\ncandidates for congress and such all over the country are speaking and
\ntelling us why they should be elected.  And we’re getting a
\nretrospective (necrology, actually) of Democrats who have died since
\nthe last convention — all to the “Forrest Gump Suite.”  People
\nare bored because “nothing happens here.”<\/p>\n

But the boredom results almost directly from the attempt of both
\nparties to infuse their processes with more democracy.  As one of
\nmy colleague-friends put it, “The Democratic National Committee changed
\nits nominating rules after 1968 such that a majority of the delegates
\nto the convention had to be chosen by ‘the people’ — that is, through
\nprimaries or caucuses. In response, most of Democratic-controlled
\nstates changed their election laws to be in compliance with the DNC,
\nand so both the Republicans (because they were forced to, not because
\nthey wanted to) and the Democrats chose their candidates through
\nprimaries and caucuses.”<\/p>\n

The Democrats have what are called “super-delegates”, who are
\nessentially party hacks, electeds, and so forth, who make up about a
\nsixth or a fifth of the votes needed to get the nomination.  They
\ntend to commit their votes early on in the process, so that Al Gore,
\nfor example, had about one third of the votes needed for the nomination
\nbefore the primaries even started.<\/p>\n

So democracy may not have killed the convention as some sort of
\nmeaningful political event, but it was certainly one of the primary
\nweapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s what’s going on (with some help from my friends (only one has a web presence) who study the development of the American political system. Lots of the bloggers here have noted that the DNC is pretty boring.  It is.  Really.  Right now, a variety of candidates for congress and such all over the country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[661],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deeencee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-nK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}