Hillary is free to continue through to the Dem Convention, but why?

Read into this what you will...

Posted: Thursday, May 29, 2008 1:20 PM by Mark Murray

From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli
... But we in the Hillary Clinton traveling press corps were just alerted that the sign-up page for transportation and hotel rooms was updated for the coming week. Interestingly, it allows us to sign up for travel after June 3, the final primary day -- right up through June 6.

A sign of optimism? A sign she's not giving up anytime soon? "Sign up and see," was all Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said.

Carson later added, "There are a lot of places to go between now and November 4."

December 06, 2007

What If the Conventions Are Contested?

By G. Terry Madonna and Michael Young

It's the dream of every political junkie in America and the nightmare of every presidential campaign: a contested convention that forces the nomination fight beyond the first ballot. But whether hoped for or dreaded, contested conventions are the rarest of phenomenon in modern politics. Almost three in four Americans were not yet born the last time either party had such a contest.

For Democrats, that was in 1952 when it took three ballots to nominate Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois for the first of what would be two unsuccessful campaigns for the presidency. The GOP's last multi-ballot convention occurred four years earlier in 1948. New York Governor Thomas Dewey won that one in another three ballot contest before going on to lose to Harry Truman.

Since 1952, no convention has gone beyond the first ballot. In fact, only one convention has been seriously contested at all--the Republican Convention in 1976 when Gerald Ford barely beat Ronald Reagan on the first ballot.

But this particular chapter of American political history may be ripe for revision in 2008. Certainly, party nomination rules adopted since 1968 make contested conventions unlikely. But less than a month away from the 2008 primaries and caucuses, both major parties have multi-candidate struggles going on--and arguably either party, or even both parties, could open their respective conventions without a consensus nominee.

<...>

The political parties' aversion to contested conventions is not without reason. Party slugfests at the convention often augur defeat at the polls. Both the Democrats (1952) and the Republicans (1948) lost after their last multi-ballot conventions. Similarly the GOP lost presidential elections in 1912 and 1940 after bitter convention fights, while Democrats lost after multi-ballot conventions in 1920 and 1924. More recently, the 1968 Democratic debacle in Chicago, featuring riots outside the convention hall and near riots inside, showed just how difficult it is for a badly divided party to win.

more

May 29, 2008

Reid also ready to shut it down

Per Political Radar:


ALSO: Pelosi, CNN reports, has begun calling uncommitted superdelegates, urging them to make up their mind.