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030520 Len’s Letter #23
Nightmare Conventions and Their Consequences
Some complain that Bernie Sanders created a kind of nightmare for the Democratic Party in 2016. I do not think that is accurate. Sanders acknowledged defeat after the California Primary. Hillary Clinton had accumulated enough delegates to win. More than a month before the convention, he spoke to his supporters as a losing candidate hoping to influence the campaign.
He was enormously popular with the crowd at the convention. After the first roll call vote, when he received 38% of the delegate vote, he moved Hillary Clinton’s nomination by acclimation.
The 2020 convention could be a problem. There may be no clear winner. That could engender bitterness, divisiveness, and a loss to a terrible president. Nightmare Democratic conventions lead to Republican Presidents. Democrats have had a few nightmare conventions.
1968 was the first of a pair of terrible conventions for Democrats. Bobby Kennedy had been shot dead after the California primary. Senator Gene McCarthy, the original anti-war candidate was still running. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, once the Democratic Party’s premiere radical, had been unable to confront President Lyndon Johnson about the military, political, and moral failure of the Vietnam War. While the police rioted against demonstrators, the Democratic delegates nominated Humphrey for President. Not a good look. Richard Nixon was elected President.
1972 was another nightmare. Anti-war Senator George McGovern had helped create the post-1968 nominating process. He understood it and used it. The convention, however, was interminable. It adopted a platform that included immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, abolishing the draft, amnesty for those who left the country or were jailed resisting the War, guaranteed family income, guaranteed jobs, and a right to be different.
Chicago Mayor Daley’s Illinois delegation was replaced by Alderman and former President of the Brandeis student body, Billy Singer’s delegation. George McGovern’s acceptance speech was delayed to the small hours of the morning. The convention felt even longer three weeks later when McGovern’s selection for Vice President withdrew after disclosures that he had received shock treatments for mental illness. Nixon was reelected overwhelmingly.
Americans hate chaotic, televised political conventions. Conventions are best when they are reality television – pretend contests. The Democrats worst pair of nightmare convention began 100 years ago. It preceded television. The first radio coverage, though, was 1924. Radio made the chaos perceptable. Both conventions were hampered by the requirement, eventually abolished in 1936, that the nominee receive two-thirds of the delegate votes.
Democrats began the decade with progressive potential. The 1920 Democratic Platform supported the League of Nations, Women’s Suffrage, and statehood for Puerto Rico. It seemed to oppose the Senate filibuster. It said not a word about Blacks or the South. The 1924 Platform continued to support the League of Nations, welcomed women’s political activity, and began with a commitment to equal rights. There is nothing to make you think that equal rights referred to Black Americans, though.
The 1920 convention had a progressive favorite from California – William Gills McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary. It also had ghosts. Woodrow Wilson, not really recovered from his stroke, and William Jennings Bryan, three-time nominee for President, both had hopes.
Those hopes helped prevent the favorite’s nomination. Those hopes helped prevent anyone from getting two-thirds of the vote. Not Attorney General Alexander Palmer of the Palmer Raids to deport so-called Communist immigrants. Not John W. Davis, former US Solicitor General and then the US Ambassador to the UK. Not Al Smith the Governor of New York. And certainly not Kentucky’s Laura Clay who received the first ever vote in a major party convention for a woman for President. Not the nominee for Vice President, either. He had not entered the presidential contest. The Vice Presidential nominee was the Assistant Secretary for the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Presidential nominee was a progressive Democrat, the Governor of Ohio, James M. Cox. The nomination took forty-four ballots. Cox lost the Presidential election overwhelmingly to the candidate who promised “normalcy,” – Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding turned out to be our most corrupt president to date. A convention with 44 ballots was part of the abnormality the country saw as Democratic leadership.
1924 was worse. 103 Ballots. Remember, this was the first Democratic convention covered by radio. William Gills McAdoo was the front-runner again. His progressive reputation, earned through his support for unemployment insurance, compensation for injuries on the job, and an eight hour day were offset by his having received a contribution from an oilman implicated in Harding’s Teapot Dome Scandal. A proponent of prohibition, his principal opponent was New York Governor, Al Smith. The Klu Klux Klan, a presence at this convention, preferred McAdoo to Roman Catholic Al Smith.
The convention finally settled on John W. Davis of West Virginia, former US Solicitor General, then the US Ambassador to the UK and, eventually, legal counsel to J P. Morgan. In his last case before the US Supreme Court, he defended the concept of separate, but equal in Brown v Board of Education.
Like James M. Cox before him, he set a record while losing. He lost overwhelmingly earning the smallest percentage of the total popular vote of any candidate ever.
Could those elections have had a different result? No Nixon Presidency? No Harding Presidency? Without them, we would be a different and better country.
In 1968 if Hubert Humphrey had repudiated the Vietnam War? Had met with protestors? Had worked with Mayor Richard Daley to keep the police away from the protestors? Would it have made a difference? Or were the divisions in the Democratic Party just too great?
In 1972 if George McGovern had taken control of the convention? He had the votes to win. He had to control his supporters and make the convention run smoothly. Was he willing to do that? Was he able to do that?
In 1920 if Woodrow Wilson had supported William Gillis McAdoo? Would the nomination have been completed in a single ballot? Even with the two-thirds requirement
In 1924. 1924 is tougher. The divisions in the Democratic Party may have been too great. Greater than the generational and cultural differences in 1968? Wet versus dry? White, rural Protestants versus urban Catholics? And the presence of the Ku Klux Klan?
In 2020. What will we have? Generational and cultural differences between the Biden and the Sanders people? White Christian males v the rest of us?
1948 is a hopeful reminder that division does not mean losing. Harry Truman was the incumbent president. But he was seen as unelectable. Republicans had taken control of Congress in 1946. Southern delegates walked out of the convention to form the Dixiecrats. Hubert Humphrey’s civil rights plank for the platform precipitated the walk out. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond was their presidential nominee. Dropped as Vice President by FDR in favor of Harry Truman, Henry Wallace was fired as Commerce Secretary for a speech urging positive relations with the Soviet Union. Fired, he and his supporters formed the Progressive Party with Wallace as their presidential candidate.
Harry Truman got 49.8% of the popular vote and 303 electoral college votes. Republican Thomas Dewey received 45.1% of the popular vote and 189 electoral college votes. Strom Thurmond received 2.4% of the popular vote and 30 electoral college votes. Henry Wallace received 2.4% of the popular vote, but no electoral college votes. The unelectable Harry Truman remained president of the United States.
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Texas Supreme Court’
Republican control all nine seats of the Texas Supreme Court
Democratic District Court Judge Amy Clark Meachum running for Texas Supreme Court Place 1, Chief Justice against Republican Chief Justice Nathan Hecht
Democratic Attorney Kathy Cheng for Texas Supreme Court Place 6 against Republican incumbent Supreme Court Justice Jane Bland
Democratic District Court Judge Staci Williams for Texas Supreme Court Place 7 against Republican incumbent Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Boyd.
Democratic District Court of Appeals Judge Gisela Triana against incumbent Supreme Court Justice Brett Busby.