Unconventional #10: This year’s conventions won’t be ‘contested.’ Here’s why they could still be crazy.

Cruz, on the other hand, needed to suspend the laws of gravity. He needed to reverse the tide. He needed to tear a hole in the fabric of space and time.

He accepted reality instead.

So what does Cruz’s exit mean for political journalists like us — and for political junkies like you? Does it mean that we have to abandon our dreams of convention drama, either in Cleveland or in Philadelphia?

Not a chance.

So far, the media has obsessed over the idea of a contested convention — the delegate bribing, the floor fight, the endless rounds of balloting. It makes for a romantic vision (and, not incidentally, great TV).

But actual contested conventions are extremely rare in contemporary American politics. In fact, every convention in the modern primary era has been decided on the first ballot — even the ones, like the 1976 GOP confab, that we tend to remember as “contested.” The last time it took Democrats or Republicans multiple ballots to settle on a nominee was in 1952, long before statewide primaries were the most decisive part of the process.

Far more common is what we might call the “conflicted convention.” These are conventions at which the nominee is basically known ahead of time, yet conflict ensues anyway. It could be because a rival with little chance of winning remains in the race in order to influence the party platform (as Gary Hart did in 1984); it could be because a distant runner-up is trying to change the rules and get pledged delegates released f-rom their voting commitments (as Ted Kennedy did in 1980). Whatever the reason, conflicted conventions are anything but boring.

And the least boring — the most dramatic and combustible — of conflicted conventions is the kind likely to consume both Cleveland and Philadelphia this summer: conventions defined by deep divisions over the ideological direction of the party and passionate opposition to the presumptive nominee.

Both Republicans and Democrats have endured this kind of conflicted (if not contested) convention in the not-too-distant past.

Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his running mate, Maine Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Aug. 29, 1968. (Photo: AP)

In 1968, the Democratic Party seemed destined for a contested convention in Chicago. As antiwar candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy gathered steam, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson withdrew f-rom the race, anointing his loyal vice president, Hubert Humphrey, to run in his stead. Kennedy competed in the primaries; the pro-war Humphrey chose to amass delegates through other means. Then, the night he won the pivotal California primary, Kennedy was assassinated.

The dream of a contested convention died with Kennedy. With the progressive vote divided between McCarthy and George McGovern, Humphrey arrived in Chicago as the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, and he wound up winning by more than 1,000 votes on the first ballot. But the convention was hardly drama-free: Inside the hall, Humphrey faced a major credentials fight, with delegations f-rom 15 states attempting to unseat his delegates and install anti-Vietnam delegates instead. Hostile debates between pro-war and “peace” delegates broke out on national television. City policemen allied with the local political machine roughed up liberal delegates and journalists in plain view of news cameras. Behind the scenes, insiders maneuvered to get Ted Kennedy to run. And on the streets of Chicago, antiwar progressives staged massive demonstrations that soon escalated into riots. While the protesters chanted, “The whole world is watching,” police bombed them with tear gas and beat them with billy clubs, leaving many bloody and dazed.

Four years earlier, Republicans had endured their own conflicted convention — less traumatic, perhaps, but still tension-filled — in San Francisco. Described by historian Rick Perlstein as the “ugliest of Republican conventions since 1912,” the 1964 GOP confab saw entrenched moderates facing off against conservative insurgents in a fight that would eventually redefine the party. In the primaries, archconservative Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater vanquished his main rival, moderate New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, along with several lesser competitors. But moderate forces didn’t give up when the primaries ended. On June 6, they launched a movement to draft Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton. A week later, he announced his bid.

“Today the nation — and indeed the world — waits to see if another proud political banner will fal-ter, grow limp and collapse in the dust,” Scranton said in his speech. “Lincoln would cry out in pain if we sold out our principles.”

“The hour is late,” lamented Rockefeller, “but if all leaders in the moderate mainstream of the Republican Party will unite upon a platform and upon Gov. Scranton, the moderate cause can be won.”

Scranton spent the next month holding massive rallies and trying to sway GOP delegates, with some success. According to a Harris Poll taken late that June, 62 percent of rank-and-file Republicans preferred Scranton to Goldwater.

The GOP delegates, however, did not agree. In San Francisco’s Cow Palace, they openly clashed with “Stop Goldwater” Republicans; a fistfight nearly broke out when a Goldwater supporter mocked Italian Americans. Meanwhile, “Goldwater devotees grew increasingly vicious as the days wore on,” as historian Josh Zeitz has recounted:

 

It “wasn’t just the galleries,” recalled one moderate attendee. “It was the floor, it was the hall. The venom of the booing and the hatred in people’s eyes was really quite stunning.” 

 

A leader of the New York Young Republicans recalled the event as “horrible. I felt like I was in Nazi Germany.” No less a party stalwart than former President Dwight Eisenhower called the gathering “unpardonable. … I was deeply ashamed.” 

In the end, however, the delegates awarded Goldwater an easy victory on the first ballot.

Sen. Barry Goldwater accepts the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, July 16, 1964, with a blast at the Democrats and a promise that “together we will win” in the November election. (Photo/AP)

It’s too early to say whether Cleveland or Philadelphia will look anything like 1964 or 1968. But many of the conditions this year are the same: the serious ideological rifts, the widespread antipathy toward the likely nominees, the sense that America is at a turning point.

Will Bernie Sanders — who upset Hillary Clinton last night in Indiana and is likely to win additional contests in the weeks ahead — threaten to withhold his support for Clinton unless the party’s platform and primary process are reformed? Will some daring Republican mount a William Scranton-like challenge to Trump in Cleveland? Will a third-party candidate emerge and scramble the entire equation?

Whatever happens, we’ll be covering it all right here in Unconventional.

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With his wife Heidi by his side, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz suspends his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, May 3, 2016, in Indianapolis. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

By Jon Ward

National conservative leaders and activists who have held private meetings over the past month to determine if a third-party candidacy is viable know that their window of opportunity is effectively closed. In Texas, a third-party candidate would have to submit roughly 80,000 signatures of Texas voters who had not voted in either primary by next Monday. And that is not going to happen.

(Read the full version of this story here.) 
Erick Erickson, a conservative radio talk show host and publisher who has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics, said Tuesday that there is growing resignation among some members of the group who have been meeting to discuss a third-party bid. Erickson said that when the group convenes a conference call Wednesday, “my guess is the consensus is going to be, we can’t mobilize a third party to do much good.” “A lot of people are thinking, let’s let this shake out and let there be a reckoning,” Erickson said.But another person involved in the third-party talks was adamant that such work will continue to move forward. “Conservatives against Trump will remain conservatives against Trump even if he gets the nomination,” the Trump opponent said. “We will be looking for every al-ternative to Donald Trump.” The anti-Trump group is looking at how to provide a reason for NeverTrump voters to come out to the polls, to keep their votes for House and Senate candidates f-rom going uncast. This could be a national write-in campaign, or a state-by-state patchwork effort. But even an anti-Trump super-PAC, Our Principles PAC, signaled that if Trump is the nominee, they will not continue to oppose him. “We will continue to educate voters about Trump until he, or another candidate, wins the support of a majority of delegates to the convention,” said Katie Packer, the group’s chair. And many influential Republican operatives behind the scenes gave up the cause of stopping Trump days ago, resigning themselves to his nomination. “He appears to me to be an amoral, arrogant, divisive man. However, I think he has tapped into the desperate frustration of many Americans and just maybe could grow as a candidate and politician.” one Republican insider said. In Cruz’s concession speech, he positioned himself for a future presidential run by referring to Ronald Reagan’s speech in 1976 after narrowly losing a contested convention to incumbent President Gerald Ford. Cruz cast himself as a Reaganesque figure who he said looked past “the close horizons” that preoccupied those thinking only of “their own fortunes” and peered far ahead into the future, concerned for coming generations of Americans. But the mention of Reagan and 1976 also raised questions about why Cruz will not continue his candidacy on to the GOP convention this year in Cleveland. One adviser noted that d-ropping out was an attempt to be a team player for the Republican Party. However, a Cruz endorsement of Trump seems unlikely. The Cruz adviser, asked about the chances of such an endorsement, just rolled his eyes. In the closing days before this primary vote, Cruz spoke in increasingly bitter terms about Trump. He implied that Trump is “evil,” said that “we are staring at the abyss” and “it is only Indiana that can pull us back.” Cruz also called Trump a “serial philanderer,” a “pathological liar” and “amoral,” and said that voters should choose him over Trump because “we are not a petty, bigoted, angry people.” Cruz still has 546 delegates bound to him on the first ballot at the Republican convention in Cleveland this July. He could use them to negotiate for input on the party platform, as many past presidential candidates in competitive primaries have done. But his campaign is just now beginning to reckon with what to do next. Former Virginia Gov. Ken Cuccinelli, tasked with overseeing Cruz’s delegate operation, didn’t have an answer for what will happen to those 546 delegates. “We’re not ready to talk about that,” Cuccinelli said.

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Bernie Sanders speaks at his “A Future to Believe In” rally in April, at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington, W.Va. (Photo: Sholten Singer/The Herald-Dispatch via AP) 

By Liz Goodwin

At July’s convention, which he insists will be “contested,” Bernie Sanders plans to get his key policy goals, such as a $15 minimum wage and a ban on fracking, into the party platform. His even more ambitious goal is to transform the way the party picks its presidential nominee, to make it easier for a Sanders-like candidate to win in the future.

(Read the full version of this story here.)

First on the agenda is changing the primary system in each state so that independents and even Republicans can vote to pick the Democratic nominee. Sanders has done much better in these so-called open primaries than in closed ones.

“I think clearly the convention and the Democratic National Committee can change the rules and can cre-ate a scenario that makes it clear that we want open primaries in 50 states in this country,” Sanders told the Washington Post last week. He also said it’s time for the party to “rethink” its superdelegate system.

But can Sanders, who did not identify as a Democrat until this past year, convince Democrats to so dramatically change their own rules at their convention? The Clinton campaign clearly does not think Sanders has as much leverage as the thinks he does.

The former secretary of state laughed when NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked her Tuesday about Sanders claims that the convention will be “contested” in July.

Meanwhile, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the DNC, said on MSNBC Monday that if anything, she would prefer to change all 50 primaries to be closed, not open.

“I believe that the party’s nominee should be chosen — this is Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s opinion — that the party’s nominee should be chosen by members of the party,” she said.

Another problem for Sanders: The convention is usually not the place whe-re major primary rules changes happen. “Reforming the rules for the next primary season four years f-rom now will probably not happen in a major way at the convention,” said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a superdelegate who backs Clinton. “The Democrats generally make their rules two years ahead with a rules committee put together largely by the president’s people, if there is a Democratic president.”

Dean added that changing the primaries to be fairer is difficult because states can be stubborn about their processes. “Caucuses are even more undemocratic than closed primaries because they discriminate against Americans stationed overseas, the infirm and disabled, those in nursing homes, etc. Try getting caucus states to give up their status,” Dean said.

The former governor said it’s far more likely that the Democrats would rethink the role of the party’s superdelegates. Superdelegates, who are party officials and politicians, were cre-ated to act as a check against nominating a candidate too liberal to win general elections. But they’ve never functioned that way, instead just backing the candidate who won the most pledged delegates in each election. A move to officially change the rules so that superdelegates function the same as pledged delegates may gain traction. Delegates could appoint a committee to look into those changes at the convention, or pass a non-binding resolution to change that process.

Sanders has not made it explicit whether he will push for a floor fight on the rules at the convention or if he’ll just demand his fair share of delegates on the platform writing committee and other committees. Sanders’ top strategist Tad Devine did not respond to a request to comment about the team’s strategy.

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4. Video: Sean Spicer on Republican Party: “We need to unite”