By Stephen Smoot
Prior to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, parallel discussions had started to emerge about two important federal level issues that hearkened back to an older methodology.
The first involves President Joe Biden stepping away from his campaign and allowing his party to nominate another candidate. Many presume that the Democrats will rally around Vice President Kamala Harris, although she generally fails to inspire much enthusiasm outside of their party base and had a not-very-reassuring phone conversation with a group of major Party donors after Biden backed out.
While the Democratic Party may rally around whomever it wants, the process of selecting a nominee will fall to the Democratic National Convention. Most Americans alive today only know the primary election method of selecting nominees, where party voters come together to vote for whom they wish to represent their party.
For just shy of half of US presidential election history, however, open conventions selected the party nominee. The first happened in 1831 when what would soon be known as the Democratic Party split. A grouping calling itself the National Republicans (no relation to the current GOP which formed in the 1850s) nominated Henry Clay and went down to defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson.
In addition to selecting the nominee, the other vital work lies in the party platform of campaign themes and ideals. Most voters ignore these, but the process of forming them often lays bare ideological differences among wing of the party.
The Election of 1860 provided a dramatic example of how these conventions operated. Most expected the Republican Party to nominate William Seward for President. The prominent New Yorker had groomed himself for the job throughout the late 1850s, even conducting a foreign tour in preparation.
Delegates in brokered conventions often rebelled against the notion of an automatic coronation unless their party had an incumbent ready, willing, and able to run. To win a brokered convention, the nominee must receive the majority support of the delegates. Those delegates can nominate and support anyone they want, even someone from another party.
Leading right up to the first balloting, “managers” for candidates would scurry hither and yon to build support. This produced the unsavory reputation of such conventions for “back room deals” in “smoke-filled rooms,” not an inaccurate description. Some delegates could be persuaded by vague promises of consideration down the line, such as support for them in their elections or even the possibility of a federal job. Through much of the 19th century, the federal workforce was dominated by political appointees because no civil service policy controlled hiring.
Going into a convention, the favorite often had to face a spectrum of opponents. Almost all featured some kind of “favorite son” candidates, for example, Pennsylvania’s delegation to the 1860 Republican National Convention voted first for fellow Keystone Stater Simon Cameron. Aside from these, who rarely got much traction in any convention, conventions also featured serious alternatives to the odds on favorite going in.
Practicality, strategy, and ideology all went into battle in the quest for delegates, because each delegate was moved by different considerations – and sometimes those considerations changed from balloting to balloting. The convention would continue balloting like a public Papal Conclave until one nominee took a majority. After expressing their support for Cameron in the first ballot, Pennsylvania’s delegation all switched to Lincoln even though each delegate could vote his own conscience.
One of the main differences between brokered conventions and primary election based nominations lies in the ideological dynamics behind them. Brokered conventions usually forced the party to the middle to compromise on someone – anyone – who could win the support of the majority.
In 1860, even many abolitionist Republicans found Seward too radical on the biggest issue of the day, slavery. Brokered convention delegates understood that their job lay in selecting not a President, but a candidate capable of winning the presidency. They had enough political savvy to grasp the difference and generally acted accordingly.
In other words, a majority of the delegates likely had no problem with Seward, but believed that his aggressive abolitionism would cost them states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in the general. Lincoln occupied the more moderate, and therefore the compromise, position.
Primary elections, however, reflect more the desires of the base, particularly the ideological. A common saying is that candidates run to the wings for the primary, then back to the center for the general, at least in the days before ideology grew into a consuming force in politics.
Primary elections, thus, encourage the nomination of more radical candidates than brokered conventions did, at least generally speaking. Conventions that did nominate radicals, such as when the Democrats repeatedly chose William Jennings Bryan, did their party no favors. Vice presidential selections, such as when President William McKinley chose Theodore Roosevelt to run with him, would often be made to satisfy the ideological base.
Why spend all of this time on a history lesson? At the time of this writing, media reports indicate that Biden may leave the race for health reasons. While many may assume that Harris automatically steps in, that is not so. She would have to emerge victorious in a brokered convention of a fractured party that has little faith in her and realizes that, for most of America, her California background serves as a millstone around her neck rather than a help.
Since few media figures know much about the concept or history of brokered conventions, they will seem novel to them. They should consider the question “is there any thing whereof it may be said, See this is new? It hath already been already of old time which was before us.”
Sadly in this age, however, “there is no remembrance of former things” that would help the media understand that “the thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done . . . “
“And there is no thing new under the sun.”