Continental liar from the state of Maine

February 5, 2020 9:39 PM

Brief histories of contested national conventions: Republican, Democratic.
posted by Chrysostom (11 comments total)

"Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" "Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!"
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:21 PM on February 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the other ones.
posted by adept256 at 2:32 AM on February 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Any legit odds on Bloomberg yet?
posted by sammyo at 5:02 AM on February 6, 2020

The Democrats used to require 2/3 of delegates to win the nomination. For almost a century. This led to many, many disasters, probably most notably in 1924.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:15 AM on February 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

So, since the 1968 reform that required every state to have a primary or caucus “so that the people’s choice couldn’t be easily thwarted again,” there has been only one contested convention in either party, and the ultimate winner there (Gerald Ford) was the leader in number of primary votes and delegates heading into the convention.

Anyone who thinks they can sweep into a contested convention without a single primary delegate or even without the lead and walk away with the nomination (ahem Bloomberg) without ripping the party apart and causing a nationwide scandal seems fairly delusional to me. It’s one thing to broker a nominee when primaries didn’t exist, but that would be publicly overruling the vote of the people.
posted by sallybrown at 6:56 AM on February 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

Ha! The vote of the people gets overridden all the time and nobody pays a price.
posted by Manic Pixie Hollow at 7:10 AM on February 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Well, except for the people.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:46 AM on February 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

Master of this House/Quick to cause us pain/Continental liar from the state of Maine
posted by ilana at 9:55 AM on February 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I might be reading it wrong, but to me it looks like Predictit currently has Bernie in first place at $0.47, followed by Bloomberg at $0.21, followed by Biden at $0.15. Might have been readjusted.

It does comport with my sense that Biden is tumbling headlong into the sunken place.
posted by Beardman at 11:58 AM on February 6, 2020

I was recently reading the start of one of the Caro books about LBJ, which mentions a pile of complex wrangling before JFK was chosen as Dem prez candidate in 1960. So was this uh contested? Just askin for clarification?
posted by ovvl at 4:39 PM on February 6, 2020

JFK came into the convention just short of the delegates needed, but some people flipped and he won on the first ballot. So not technically contested, I'd say.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:28 PM on February 6, 2020 [2 favorites]