Political scientist Norman Ornstein here writes about the 2016 Republican presidential nomination contest. He concludes by saying, “Somewhere ner half the delgates will feel jilted, and Cleveland will rock. But there are plenty of historical parallels for that kind of convention, from the Cow Palace in 1964 to Chicago in 1968. History may prove a guide, but it’s no longer clear where it’s pointing.”
The historical references are to the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco that nominated Barry Goldwater, and the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago that nominated Hubert Humphrey. Both national conventions showcased lots of internal party dissent, and in both cases, the nominee went on to lose the general election. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
We heard the same stuff in 2012, it didn’t happen. Some Ron Paul delegates were jilted but the vast majority rallied behind Romney.
The difference is that Ron Paul never led any national polls for the 2012 Republican nomination. So his supporters really couldn’t make a convincing case that he was unjustly kept from being nominated. Injustices were committed against his forces but no one honestly believed that he had been cheated out of the nomination.
How about the 1860 Donkeys stuff ???
Elephants — Divide and Conquer.
Civil WAR I in 1861-1865
About 750,000 DEAD Americans on both sides.
The price to get the 13th-14th-15th Amdts.
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A much higher price coming to get —
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. ??? Stay tuned.
The Unity Coalition’s 2015 Green Party Candidates
The facebook pages of the two candidates in the United Coalition who are up for election in 2015, Carey Campbell [Green Independent] and Joe Phillips [Green], are as follows:
Carey Campbell [Green Independent] for Fairfax County, Virginia County Supervisor:
https://www.facebook.com/carey.campbell.33?fref=ts
Joseph Phillips [Green] for Duchess County, New York County Supervisor
https://www.facebook.com/joe.marlboro?fref=ts
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Please help spread the word about our team, send a friend request and build around our team players; Carey Campbell [Green Independent] and Joseph Phillips [Green]!
Nobody has it as good as OUR team. The team, the team, the TEAM!
* * *
Signed, James Ogle [Republican] for US President
The USA and International Parliament’s United Coalition
secretary@allpartysystem.com or 831.747.5863
http://usparliament.org/
http://www.international-parliament.org/
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Both 1964 and 1968 were won on the first ballot. Goldwater never had any chance. Humphrey came very close. Another week and he could have won or deadlocked the election (with help from Wallace). The problem is going to be if the large number of candidates cause it to go on for ballot after ballot after ballot.
See the 1924 Donkey Convention chaos.
Down to flaming doom due to the Elephant keep cool Calvin Coolidge — in the roaring 20s.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if at the end of it all, the Republican Party ends up deciding the issue on the 1st ballot, while the Democratic Party with far fewer candidates has to maybe go to a 2nd or even more interesting 3rd ballot.
I’m old enough to have watched the then-network gavel-to-gavel coverage of both conventions. The 1964 GOP convention in San Francisco was contentious inside the convention hall, but I don’t remember any problems outside it. The scenes that stick with me: CBS’s Dan Rather on the floor of the convention, being assaulted by a delegate or a security guard, and Walter Cronkite in the anchor booth saying, “It looks like we’ve got a lot of thugs on the floor of this convention” (he apologized a few minutes later for losing his cool); the delegates booing New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who’d been a leading contender for the nomination; Henry Cabot Lodge (who’d won the New Hampshire primary in a write-in vote against both Goldwater and Rockefeller despite being in Saigon as Democratic President Johnson’s ambassador to South Vietnam) putting into nomination Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, who most Republicans I knew were supporting as a last-minute moderate alternative; General Eisenhower, looking old and ill and confused but clearly disgusted with what was happening to the party of which he’d been the only winning presidential candidate in the previous 35 years; and Goldwater’s incendiary acceptance speech with the lines, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” (Gov. Scranton said an hour later, “Well, I always thought moderation in pursuit of justice *was* a virtue.”)
Goldwater never had a chance. He carried his own state of Arizona and five Deep South states, but the Democrats were swept into office in astonishing numbers. They ended up controlling the House 295-140 and the Senate 68-32, more than two-third majorities, setting the way for the Great Society legislation like Medicare, Medicaid, immigration reform, voting rights, and more to follow up on the 1964 Civil Rights Act that Goldwater, unlike most Republicans, opposed.
As Michael pointed out, the 1968 election, despite the tumult (mostly in the streets, where there was what the Walker Commission later called a “police riot” against young antiwar demonstrators and incredible violence that rivaled the sights on the streets of Prague as the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia during the same time frame), was very close. In the end, most of the Democratic liberal antiwar voters swung to Humphrey, and the trend was going his way. The election, as I remember, was not called until the following morning — I watched it on NBC’s Today Show, and when people in the studio started clapping, the host, Hugh Downs, had to say, “The applause is just because people here are so tired after 13 hours of coverage they’re glad there’s a winner, not because of who won.”
Nixon won with 43.4% to Humphrey’s 42.7% of the vote, with Wallace getting 13.5% and carrying 5 states.
You can see there was no landslide in 1968 in the Congressional elections: the Democrats lost only 5 House seats and 5 Senate seats but still held solid majorities in both chambers.
The shocking scenes of the Chicago violence were so upsetting to me at 17 that I actually had to go to my pediatrician, who prescribed Librium (a mild tranquilizer). The most vivid memories of the convention I have was the first night and the delegates chanting “Julian Bond, Julian Bond!” – the great civil rights leader who died this week – during the fight over the seating of the Georgia delegation (Bond led an integrated alternate delegation and later got close to 50 votes for Vice President despite being too young for the office; a measure of dissatisfaction could be seen in over 600 voters who didn’t vote for V.P. because they were angry or had gone outside the convention hall for the real action); Sen. Abe Ribicoff’s nominating speech for George McGovern saying “With George McGovern as President, we wouldn’t have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago” and Mayor Daley (the father) clearly yelling “Fuck you! Fuck you!” — you could read his lips but not hear him — at him from the front row. But much of the convention floor is a blur in my mind because of the confrontations with the police and National Guard in the streets.
The best (fictional) film about the 1968 convention is Haskell Wexler’s “Medium Cool,” which sets a romance between an Appalachian widow and a TV reporter covering the convention amid the chaos in the streets. (At one point, a bomb explodes and they left in the movie someone yelling to the director, “Look out, Haskell! It’s real!”
Norman Mailer’s “Miami and the Siege of Chicago” is the best book coverage of the 1968 conventions. Probably the coverage of the 1964 GOP convention I’m familiar with is in Theodore H. White’s “Making of the President” volume for that year when White essentially had a monopoly on the genre. By 1968, Joe McGinnis’s “Selling of the President” (Roger Ailes triumphs!) was more pertinent.
The first political book I remember reading soon after the 1964 election and the Republican wipeout was a rush-to-publish paperback, Robert J. Donovan’s “The End of the Republican Party?” After the 1968 election, the analogue would be Kevin Phillips’ “The Emerging Republican Majority.”
The Donkeys had major convention power stuggles in 1968-1988 to get P.R. and lots more Democracy into their conventions.
Abolish the super timebomb Electoral College —
and robot party hack primaries, caucuses and conventions.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.