The Nation: A Contested Convention Is Exactly What the Democratic Party Needs

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36713-a-contested-convention-is-exactly-what-the-democratic-party-needs

What Sanders is proposing is a necessary quest — and a realistic one. Already, he is better positioned than any recent insurgent challenger to engage in rules and platform debates, as well as in dialogues about everything from the vice-presidential nomination to the character of the fall campaign. As veteran political analyst Rhodes Cook noted in a survey prepared for The Atlantic, by mid-April, Sanders had exceeded the overall vote totals and percentages of Howard Dean in 2004, Jesse Jackson in 1988, Gary Hart in 1984 and Ted Kennedy in 1980, among others. (While Barack Obama’s 2008 challenge to Clinton began as something of an insurgency, he eventually ran with the solid support of key party leaders like Kennedy.) By the time the District of Columbia votes on June 14, Sanders will have more pledged delegates than any challenger seeking to influence a national convention and its nominee since the party began to democratize its nominating process following the disastrous, boss-dominated convention of 1968.

This new reality has Clinton supporters fretting about the prospect of a chaotic convention that could expose divisions within the party when it should be uniting for what increasing looks like a fall fight against Donald Trump. But a muscular appearance by Sanders and his delegates at the convention doesn’t have to lead to bitterness. Historically, contested conventions — not carefully choreographed coronations — have led parties and their nominees to take more audacious positions and to excite broader electoral coalitions.

“Conventions are where we come together, but you don’t really come together if you avoid differences,” says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has protested, attended or spoken at nearly a dozen Democratic national conventions (and who has not endorsed a candidate in the primary race this year). “You start by understanding that it takes two wings to fly. If you have two strong wings — a wing that has won and a wing that has lost — you don’t deny the differences; you recognize them. You debate, find common ground, find ways to start working together for immediate goals — the next election — and for long-term goals that can mean as much to the nation as to the party.”

Recent conventions have been so tightly scripted that it’s easy to forget that both parties have long histories of contested gatherings — sometimes with open combat over the party’s standard-bearer (as may erupt at this year’s Republican convention), but often with spirited competition over rules, platforms and the very nature of the party itself. Contested conventions can open policy debates and clear the way for “significant political and social progress,” argues Fitchburg State University professor Benjamin Railton, who has analyzed the history of conventions. With 18 state wins so far and more than 1,350 delegates, Sanders is uniquely poised to push for such progress. Since Clinton will likely arrive at the convention with a majority of the pledged delegates and a lead in the popular vote, she’ll have every right to argue, as she did in April, that “I am winning. And I’m winning because of what I stand for and what I’ve done.” Front-runners rarely invite input from insurgent challengers, and if Clinton chooses to wall Sanders off, she’ll have the upper hand in Philadelphia. In January, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz appointed a pair of Clinton allies, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy and former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin, to head the platform committee. And an ardent Clinton supporter and noted Sanders antagonist, former congressman Barney Frank, will cochair the rules committee.