If you Google “brokered convention,” you get 870,000 hits. If you Google “nomination at Cleveland,” you get 370,000. A lot of people are speculating that, if no candidate gets a 1,237 majority of the delegates, the nomination is going to be determined by what happens at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland between July 18 and 21.
I think that’s very unlikely. In the event no one gets 1,237 delegates in primaries and caucuses, it is overwhelmingly likely that whatever is going to be “brokered” — agreed upon is a better term — will be agreed upon before the delegates take their seats or even arrive in the convention city.
Why? Because national conventions are no longer a unique communications medium, as they were up to the last convention that went to multiple ballots, the Democratic convention in 1952. They were the only place where politicians could determine which candidate had how much support and where they could negotiate frankly with each other.
That’s no longer true. The first media delegate count was conducted by CBS News’ Martin Plissner in 1968. That count and later media delegate counts, notably in the close Republican contest in 1976, proved to be accurate. Why weren’t there media delegate counts before? Because many convention delegates cast their votes at the direction of party bosses who would not commit themselves to their own delegates, much less the media.
The delegates were like John A. O’Brien, the Tammany mayor of New York elected to a short term in 1952, who when asked whom he would appoint as police commissioner, the most important position in city government, replied simply, “They haven’t told me yet.” And because men of business (and the few women of business) seldom made long-distance telephone calls; the first direct-dial long distance call was placed in 1951, and the system not extended into major metro areas until the late 1950s. And because Al Gore (born 1948) had not yet invented the Internet.
This year you can get delegate counts any time you want by going on RealClearPolitics.com, FiveThirtyEight.com or any number of other websites. You can bet that all the candidates have the cellphone numbers and email addresses of every delegate, and will be in touch (or are already) with those who are currently not committed to them but could, initially or on a second ballot, vote for them. They probably know which magazines they subscribe to and which websites they favor (hint: check them out on Facebook). Campaigns won’t wait till July in Cleveland to get in touch. And when a campaign has enough commitments to get 1,237 votes, it will let the media know, even as the media try to figure out who’s getting close.
That will provide time for the Republican National Committee to adjust its rules if necessary to permit those votes to be cast. If it’s necessary to go to a second ballot because some delegates are legally obliged to vote for some other candidate than their final preference on the first ballot, the rules can be adjusted accordingly. If there’s a threat of loud protest from Donald Trump supporters, roll calls can be scheduled for times with minimal television viewership. (Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s tactic of scheduling debates on Saturday nights and during Christmas season provides a model.)
All this is premised on the possibility, and perhaps the increasing likelihood, that Donald Trump doesn’t win 1,237 delegates in primaries and caucuses and that practically all other delegates selected, like the candidates who selected them, oppose his nomination as disastrous for the party, the nation or both. Trump enthusiasts will protest that party insiders are cheating him out of the nomination. But he has no moral entitlement to the votes or any delegates he hasn’t earned, and delegates not elected to vote for him have no moral duty to do so. Perhaps there will be noisy demonstrations on the convention floor, but they won’t change the result.
So if Trump falls visibly short of 1,237 delegates, the most likely scenario is that the candidate who finishes second in delegates — right now, that seems likely to be Ted Cruz, but perhaps some surprises are still in store — will probably accumulate enough delegate support to have the nomination locked up before July 18.
Well before, since the delegate count will be known after the last primaries on June 7, unless as sometimes happen negotiations continue up to deadline. So don’t expect an old-fashioned “brokered convention,” with floor fights, demonstrations and all those shenanigans. It’s not going to happen that way.
