Brokered Conventions: The Voters’ Strategy for 2008
After thirty years of matching funds and campaign finance
reform, money has never been more important in politics than it is today. Not surprisingly, the major effect of the reforms
has been to make it virtually impossible for anyone who is not personally a
millionaire to make it into elective office.
This year, both parties have rearranged the primary
calendar to, in effect, make it impossible for anyone
without a national reputation to win the presidential nomination of either
party. Bunching all the primaries
together in the early winter, under the rubric of each state demanding to have
more of an influence on the presidential selection process, is going to result
in a dangerous increase in the power of the media to choose presidents.
In years past, the New Hampshire Primary and Iowa caucuses
required candidates for president to really get out and press the flesh: to
shake hands, to sit down in livingrooms with a dozen
neighbors for hours and really let the voters get to know them. Because New Hampshire and Iowa are small
states, they winnowed the field on the basis of personality.
Then, with the
primaries in the big states were strung out from February to June, a relatively
unknown candidate, like John Kennedy or Jimmy Carter, could emerge from the
pack and win the nomination. Not so this
year.
By the time voters have
had the opportunity to digest the results of New Hampshire, a majority of the
delegates needed for nomination will already have been chosen. Therefore, the job of the voters this year is
to keep all of the viable candidates in the race through the conventions this
summer.
Consequently, voters
are going to hedge their bets by giving victory to one candidate in one state,
and to another in another, to ensure that no candidate has the nomination sewn
up before the conventions this summer.
This is going to be truer in the Republican Party than in the Democratic
Party. Hillary Clinton will probably be
the closest to nomination, but not without a long hard slog through the
primaries.
So, for the first time in
50 years, there will probably be a brokered convention to select the
presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
Ironically, given the power of polling and the penchant for partisan
impeachments, the smoke filled rooms may be, in fact, more democratic than the
primary circuit where money and the media control.