Sunday, January 06, 2008
Brokered Convention Madness
WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com
As happens every four years, what can only be described as “brokered convention madness” has broken out. It’s something people can write about, and political reporters and bloggers would just love to report on a convention that really meant something. But it just isn’t going to happen. With a hattip to our friends over at The GOP Convention Report, comes this quote from The Corner:
I have been writing about conventions professionally since 1976, and following elections since 1968. Every cycle, the breathless pieces on the brokered convention come out.
It never happened in the last 39 years, and it won’t happen next year. When candidates lose a few, their money dries up, and the madness of crowds takes over.
I’ll throw another reason out there. The media is relentless in asking trailing candidates when they are going to drop out, totally drowning out any message they have. I mean, Edwards was already getting the question this weekend.
There’s absolutely no way one of the top three Democratic candidates won’t drop out (and release their delegates) after the rush of primaries in the next few weeks. Now, admittedly, it’s easier to construct a scenario on the Republican side, with 4 or 5 major candidates still hanging in, but it’s not going to happen.
Posted by Matt at 9:58 PM 
How does that work-“release their delegates”-does one who drops out have any power as to who they are released to? If he stays in til the convention would he have more influence on the platform?
If a candidate drops out he or she can recommend who the delegates vote for, but the delegates don’t have to. In fact, releasing delegates is a “political statement”, not one covered by the DNCC rules, since delegates can vote for whoever they want at any time anyway.
Re:
“There’s absolutely no way one of the top three Democratic candidates won’t drop out (and release their delegates) after the rush of primaries in the next few weeks.”
Absolutely no way? Sounds like you’d be giving pretty fair odds to any punters out there, Matt. I’d be interested.
More substantively, why wouldn’t Edwards (say) fight to the end – picking up some delegates along the way (none of the States have a winner-takes-all rule) – in the hope that neither Clinton nor Obama would secure a majority of the delegates? Thereby opening the door for negotiation, deals re the Veep-spot, etc.
You guys were saying?
This thing is gonna drag on at least until March 4th and if Hillary doesn’t drop out then, chances are we’re going to the convention…
As far as the Republicans go… it’s a done deal.
That’s funny looking at these analysis and how wrong some of them turn out to be.