Why We Should Welcome A Contested Democratic Convention as the Best Hope for Saving Democracy.

JFK as a Delegate for Adlai Stevenson, at the last contested Democratic Convention in 1952.

If Democrats want to win and to drive the Trump Crime Family to distraction — and eventually to make them answer to the laws they are breaking — we should be pushing for the first deadlocked — or contested — Democratic National Convention since 1952. It’s not such a stretch to see that happening with several leading candidates divvying up the Democratic delegates :Buttigieg, Sanders, Klobuchar or Warren, and soon, Mike Bloomberg, whose delegate count will start to grow after Super Tuesday.,

Let’s look back to the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago for some instruciton. That was the last time any major party convention went past the first ballot. One dramatic change between that Convention 68 years ago, and today, has made a contested convention more likely. In 2018, Democrats, for the first time in modern history, passed a rule change preventing 766 so-called “super-delegates,” — DNC Members, Members of Congress, Senators and Governors, and “distinguished party members like ex-Presidents or Vice-Presidents — from casting their votes on the first ballot. This change alone might guarantee that no candidate will have enough delegates to win the Democratic Nomination on the first ballot, as last happened in 1952, the first year national political conventions were televised.