Conventions in Name Only
The parties met virtually for the first time this year by necessity, but it’s merely the fulfillment of trends long in the making.
Jonah Goldberg | Aug 28, 2020 | 58 | 52 |

The party conventions are over—and I don’t just mean the 2020 conventions.
In one sense, the conventions have been over for a very long time. They were created primarily to do two things: pick presidential nominees and craft party platforms. A convention hasn’t actually picked a nominee since 1952, when Democrat Adlai Stevenson won the nomination on the third ballot.
Since then, conventions have mostly just approved nominees as foregone conclusions on the first ballot. Ever since the rise of primaries in the early 1970s, the nominee is literally chosen before the convention. All that’s left is the coronation.
But at least conventions still crafted party platforms. These are statements of principle and policy, hammered out between different factions within a party, to state clearly (or sometimes murkily) what the party stands for. Historically, platform fights could matter enormously. It was through the negotiation of the platform that a party decided where it came down on issues such as slavery and prohibition.
The other practical benefit? The platform also gave marching orders to the nominee. It was part mission statement, part job description. Its overall purpose was to say, “This is what the party expects from you,” because the nominee was selected to do the job the party wanted. Of course, in reality, if the nominee were elected president, he could ignore the platform. Still, the principle that the party and its elected officials were bound to the platform had some juice in it.
That’s gone. In advance of the GOP convention this week, the Republican National Committee announced that, for the first time in the history of either major political party, it wasn’t going to bother writing a new platform. (Technically, the party decided in June to recycle the 2016 platform, outdated cover and all.)
“The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today,” the committee declared in a resolution.
Later, a list of soundbite promises with no policy specifics was released to describe President Trump’s second-term agenda. My favorite: “Drain the Globalist Swamp by Taking on International Organizations That Hurt American Citizens.”
Regardless, the point was clear. The party is now the servant of the nominee—in this case, the president. Hence a platform is truly pointless because the party stands for nothing other than whatever the president says it does.
There’s a third role for conventions—one that would appear to be the most obvious, in a hiding-in-plain-sight sense. Conventions are meant to CONVENE. It’s in the name. Party members from across the country travel to meet face-to-face to work, negotiate and socialize together for an organization larger than themselves. Again, such work used to include actually picking a nominee, but the primary system and modern communications destroyed that. Before the invention of the telephone, as historian and political analyst Michael Barone has noted, conventions were a necessary political technology because one couldn’t negotiate by mail. It was too slow, and power brokers didn’t want to put things on paper anyway.
Long before the pandemic, conventions had been turning into tightly scripted partisan infomercials for the coming election. Make of that what you will, but at least people still convened. They put on their silly hats, they wore their flare, and they had discussions and debates in the moments when they weren’t being used as the political equivalent of a studio audience in a ShamWow ad.
That’s gone this year, too. COVID-19 erased even the conventional part of the conventions. That made them seem like a break with the past—the first “virtual” conventions. But the reality is that they’ve been mostly virtual—conventions in name only—for a long time already. This month’s highly produced nightly videos with staged bits of spontaneity (just like the Oscars or Emmys) were the fulfillment of trends long in the making. The parties are paper-tiger marketing firms now, geared to bend their brand to whichever politician happens to win the nomination or hold power for their team.
People will show up for conventions again, but the GOP’s convention in particular makes it clear that when they do, it will be as props and applause machines only.
Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.
58 | 52 |
No one convened at the democrat convention a all. And the 2016 platform must be pretty good if you think the only complaint worth mentioning is the outdated cover. Why should we expect a *conservative* party to have big changes every 4 years? Moreover why should we believe a platform on Trump more than what Trump actually did while in office. I mean it is more important for a challenger to set out a platform.
To suggest that the democrats somehow addressed more policy at their convention seems bizarre.
Whining is not policy.
No actual policies to defeat corona other than a general obviously ridiculous promise to protect Americans all the time from everything. While also saying don't expect a miracle. Of course, it doesn't help that Pence then says hey wait a second yes miracles can happen!
No policies to end racism or violence in the streets.
On the environment he did say he would rejoin the Paris accord. I think we know Trump won't.
A big whine about guns but whining about something is not policy. They said they would take away "military type" guns. So what does that mean they will take my berretta 92 fs and my brothers 1911? When will the anti-gun lobby actually learn about guns?
What is Biden going to do with Iran and China and Russia that is different than what Trump is doing?
Honestly everyone knows what Trump will do and no one knows what Biden will do. You may not like Trump's policies but you know what they will be.
They wore flair, nor flare. Unless they wanted to shoot themselves into the sky to help the rescue party find them.