{"id":457477,"date":"2026-09-08T19:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T19:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/457477\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T19:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T19:58:12","slug":"column-trumpapalooza-is-a-sad-unnecessary-spectacle-that-achieves-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/457477\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: ‘Trumpapalooza’ is a sad, unnecessary spectacle that achieves nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters says the GOP midterm election \u201cconvention\u201d will be a \u201cTrumpapalooza<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019d be better if everyone called it that.<\/p>\n

American political conventions are one of the best examples \u2014 among way too many \u2014 of American institutional decay.<\/p>\n

In the 19th century and much of the 20th century, the quadrennial party conventions were indispensable pieces of political technology. I mean that literally. Traditionally, conventions were where party stakeholders \u2014 elected officials, party bosses, etc. \u2014 chose the nominee. Factions representing regions, interests, even ideas (how quaint!) would debate and horse-trade with each other, sometimes over days<\/a> of voting, to name someone the party could get behind.<\/p>\n

That system started to atrophy in the 1930s, as Michael Barone, the great political analyst<\/a>, has argued, because of the telephone. The kind of negotiating required for a nominee to win support was impossible to do by letter. It took too long, and besides, putting things in writing risked exposing deals and other favor-trading for which savvy politicians would never want a paper trail. You had to do it face-to-face.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conventions were thus communication devices,\u201d Barone writes<\/a>, \u201cin which campaign managers assessed candidates\u2019 strength \u2014 and responded. Votes would be held back, so as to show momentum on later ballots. Favorite-son candidacies would be launched, in the hopes that they could be withdrawn later for reward or parlayed into a dark-horse nomination. No one had an accurate idea of how many delegates candidates had.\u201d<\/p>\n

The telephone changed that. In 1936, President Roosevelt used the new technology of long-distance calling to organize support well in advance of the convention.<\/p>\n

Polling, and then television, further sapped away the function of conventions. Who needs party bosses to tell you the mood of the rank and file, when polling can deliver a much richer picture? Why put floor fights and other fodder for opponents on TV? Better to offer a picture of solidarity and excitement.<\/p>\n

But the real death knell came in 1972 with the \u201creforms<\/a>\u201d promulgated by Democrat George McGovern, which were quickly adopted by the GOP. These reforms \u2014 which I think were deformations of our democratic system \u2014 took the power to nominate a candidate away from the stakeholders and gave it to rank-and-file voters. We thus became the first and one of the only advanced democracies where parties can no longer choose their own candidates.<\/p>\n

I think that was a disaster, but that\u2019s a column for another time. One of the consequences of that disaster was that party conventions essentially became infomercials ratifying a fait accompli. The brokered convention \u2014 even the prospect for one \u2014 is gone now, replaced by a coronation.<\/p>\n

But at least the coronation still serves a purpose. It\u2019s still a necessary function of our electoral system. A boring, intelligence-insulting, performative function, but a function all the same.<\/p>\n

This midterm \u201cconvention\u201d isn\u2019t even that. No one will be formally nominated. It\u2019s just an opportunity for President Trump to put on a show \u2014 about himself.<\/p>\n

Defenders might say there\u2019s precedent for this, but their argument proves my point about decay. Democrats in 1974, 1978 and 1982 had midterm conventions. But those conventions involved various committee meetings in which party rules and resolutions were proposed and debated.<\/p>\n

In 1978, President Carter defended the midterm convention<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe it is very important for me, as a president, and also as head of the Democratic Party, to have my success and failures assessed objectively and openly by Democrats representing the grassroots of our party around the nation,\u201d Carter said. \u201cI think that was done in a very forthcoming way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Washington Post reported<\/a> that John C. White, the Democratic Party chairman, was worried that delegate disputes could \u201cturn the convention into a public relations failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course we have a broad range of opinions on some issues within our party,\u201d White said. \u201cBut if we get foolish, if we go beyond proper political division and look quarrelsome, these are things that could hurt the Democratic Party and the Democratic president.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you think the Dallas Trumpalooza is going to include an open and objective discussion of Trump\u2019s failures, or feature even the slightest political division, I want to congratulate you for having just emerged from a decade-long coma.<\/p>\n

This is a commercial with a live studio audience and nothing more. Indeed, the rot of our political institutions on display is not confined to the GOP. One of the featured keynote speakers is Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche. Whether the already ethically compromised AG\u2019s appearance at an expressly partisan event is a violation of the Hatch Act<\/a> is something for the lawyers to debate. But the spirit of it is grotesque, and a sign that our parties aren\u2019t the only institutions that have lost their way.<\/p>\n

X: @JonahDispatch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters says the GOP midterm election \u201cconvention\u201d will be a \u201cTrumpapalooza.\u201d It\u2019d be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[13540,48641,8009,1525,1751,169085,4681,48,52,51,47,50,49,103807,2219,96859,17529,3020,180529,180528,8843],"class_list":["post-457477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-candidate","tag-column","tag-convention","tag-democratic-party","tag-democrats","tag-function","tag-idea","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-midterm","tag-nominee","tag-party-boss","tag-polling","tag-president-trump","tag-quadrennial-party-convention","tag-rich-picture","tag-way"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}