By Lori Lee
NDG Contributing Writer
The national conventions are happening in the midst of a roller coaster of an election season, the Republican Convention in the shadow of a violent act and Monday’s Democratic Convention following turmoil in the party and a redrawn ticket.
While platforms have changed in recent years, at the conventions, each party will attempt to energize its base, given the current political tensions and the differences in their platforms.
What was formerly the party of Ronald Reagan has become the party of Archie Bunker, or of the blue collar worker, said former CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider. We’ve had a huge realignment, which changed the Republican base from the country club elite to the the white working class. For about 20 years, one of the biggest dividing lines in American politics has been education–The diploma divide, meaning those with a college degree, are more likely to vote democrat, especially among Whites, said Schneider.
In the suburbs, wealthy whites are now trending more democratic due to values, said Schneider, and a new lack of concern with debt means the Republican Party is no longer conservative, not only economically, but socially and culturally Further, Trump’s suggestion of withdrawing from NATO also makes it isolationist, said Schneider.
Though at times dramatic, today’s conventions don’t compare to the contested conventions of the 50s since the candidates are now chosen prior to the conventions, added Schneider.
National conventions were historically momentous events when the parties got together and decided who would lead them to victory, explains Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, retired professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California. Yet over the last few decades, the conventions have become less a decision-making mechanism and more a celebration of candidates and differences in policy, she said.
As Jeffe explains, the conventions changed dramatically in ‘72 after the mess that was made of the ‘68 Democratic Convention in Chicago, when party bosses chose Hubert Humphrey as the Democratic nominee.
Having not run in the primary, Humphrey walked into the Convention Hall with a thousand delegates already in his pocket, said Jeffe, delegates that had committed to a candidate that had been chosen for them.
After that, a commission turned nominee choice over to primary voters, expressed through the voices of pledged delegates allocated to certain territories. This put a lot more power in the hands of the voters and handed over responsibility of screening candidates to the press, she said.
The process of allocating delegates has continued to change, including the addition of super delegates in 2016–typically senior members, charged with formalizing the vote, said Johnathan Diaz, an election attorney who fights the manipulation of U.S. elections. These delegates, though not bound by the results of any state primary, would not have a vote unless a clear majority failed to form after the first round of voting, assured Diaz.
U.S. elections rules remains true to the electoral college system, where the candidate who receives the most votes isn’t necessarily the winner. Though many have questioned its relevance and fought it, none of the efforts have gotten them anywhere, said Schneider.
Since many Republican states are rural, with smaller populations, Republican continue to support the system, under which George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump were elected despite having lost the popular vote.
As long as Republicans continue to resist changing the system, nothing will ever happen, he said, because to change it requires a constitutional amendment, involving Congress, and state legislatures, now dominated by Republicans, he said.
The electoral college rules were part of a deal cut between the most populous states and those with smaller populations at the very start of the nation, explained Jeffe. The system formed a balance between the states, including the slave states, added Schneider, which insisted on equal representation.
As Jeffe said, if there had been a simple popular vote, the most populous states would have decided every election. This is the same reason each state gets only two Senators, weighing states like Wyoming equally to states like California with twenty times the people.
It may be difficult, for voters mired in election rules, as some of us are, to look at a system where the person who gets the most votes may not win. While these rules may contribute to dissatisfaction and a sense that democracy is not working, the rules are baked into the country’s fabric and the very structure of the Constitution, said Diaz, and they will likely not change.
However, the voters do have a role in the system, and certainly the media has a role in helping voters to know what they need to know, he added.
Just as social media shapes political ideas, arguably, for the first time, it will also shape the conventions, said Jeffe. The nature of the conventions have been changed by technology throughout history–the telegraph, the telephone, and the TV, which opened up political conversations increasingly over time.
Though the Obama campaign used social media for fundraising, social media is much more involved in politics now, with every platform used to shape ideas and opinions.
The shift really happened in 2020, added Diaz, accelerated by the pandemic, which prevented candidates from campaigning in the traditional ways.
Social media was a useful tool during this time, but in social media, there are no editors, no standards, and no fact checking, Schneider added. Anyone with an opinion can now put it in front of thousands through social media, and the added rhetoric further supports polarization.
The current environment of misinformation facilitates political violence, added Diaz. After all, it’s been a number of years since we’ve seen an attempted assassination of a Presidential candidate. This comes not long after January 6 and a 2020 campaign marked by voter intimidation and election worker harassment.
Yet there is a long history of voter intimidation in this country targeting communities of color, added Diaz. This goes back to the Klu Klux Klan and armed bands of self-appointed militias intimidating segments of the population to keep them from voting.
On the other hand, intimidation may help motivate people to turn out more than usual, Diaz added. In the midst of an already threatening pandemic, very heated rhetoric, and voter intimidation in 2020, U.S. elections saw record turnout.
Even so, if you say voter fraud enough times, people will start to believe it, said Diaz, and there is a lot of messaging by allies of the former president to reduce trust in the elections. They have already filed a number of frivolous lawsuits in swing states, challenging voter registration rolls, said Diaz. Unless Trump wins, they’ve already declared the general election illegitimate, he said.
Yet, following January 6th of 2021, Congress enacted the bipartisan Electoral Count Act to update procedures for counting electoral votes. Under the act, the Vice President has no discretion or authority to reject a State’s electoral votes. Prior to this, all that was needed was one member of the House and one of the Senate to file an objection, then going to a vote of both houses on whether to reject a state’s electoral votes. The 2021 act prevents a legislature from coming into special session after election day and submitting an alternate slate of electors, Diaz explained, as Donald Trump and his allies tried in 2020.
Though these reforms help strengthen us, like in 2020, we are faced again with a party willing to tear down the whole system in order to win, warned Diaz. We have seen contested elections, but never have we seen a candidate so willing to dismantle the entire system of American Democracy, he said.
Yet the growing public concern that we have seen over the health of our elections gives me hope, he added. When I talk to regular people who are concerned about the direction democracy is heading, it gives me hope that the fight’s not over yet, he said.
