Challenge at convention: squeezing in all the A-listers
The egos on parade will require some fierce wrangling.
At a normal convention, organizers would happily give a coveted speaking role to a popular vice president like Joe Biden.
But this year the Democrats find themselves with too many party leaders (Hillary Clinton, Sen. Tim Kaine, President Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Biden) and political stars (including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama) and not enough prime slots in the 10-11 p.m. window over the convention’s four nights, when the networks join cable channels in live coverage.
This cup-runneth-over challenge stands in sharp contrast to the glass-halfempty problem last week at the Republican convention, which had relatively few A-list speakers because so many prominent party leaders objected to Donald Trump.
Republicans scrambled to put together a roster and unveiled it at the last minute, while Democratic officials announced theirs early, including naming Obama and Biden as headliners for Wednesday night.
Kaine is now widely expected to speak that night as well. Will all three men share a single hour? Will Kaine speak on another night, or will Biden be squeezed out? Convention organizers and Clinton campaign officials said details would be announced soon, leaving it to other Democrats to explain that an abundance of riches is not always easy to manage.
“It’s like admissions at a really good college: There are 10 applicants for every one slot, so the Clinton campaign has to make hard choices,” said former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, who helped organize the Democratic convention in 2008. “What you’ll see this week are the leaders that Hillary wants you to see, because the program is really up to her.”
The egos on parade here this week will require some fierce wrangling. All of the speakers will be reminded of their strict time limits, and Clinton campaign advisers said they expected several speech drafts to arrive past their deadlines, since the degree of last-minute tinkering tends to be proportional to the importance of the speakers.
And no matter how much control convention organizers exert, they cannot always stop big personalities from saying what they want, as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas did when he refused to endorse Trump at the Republican convention and encouraged delegates to “vote your conscience.”
“The biggest problem the Democrats face is the number of speakers who they have to put in prime time — big egos demanding the best times,” said Russell Schriefer, a senior Republican adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012 and to Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign this year. “And with Bill Clinton and Joe Biden in particular, it is hard to dictate either content or the length of speeches, presenting potential message and scheduling nightmares.”
“It’s an unusual amount of big names to fit in, but what this convention shows is that Clinton has powerful people like Biden and Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren and Sanders to deploy on the campaign trail,” said Joe Trippi, a veteran adviser on Democratic campaigns. “She could literally park Biden in Pennsylvania to campaign for her for a month, and do the same with Kaine in Florida, and she’d do so well she could forget about President Obama or Bill Clinton.”
Clinton advisers said they were confident that Bill Clinton and Biden would deliver two of the best speeches of the convention, though they conceded that fitting all of their A-list speakers into the 10 p.m. hour would be a challenge.
Democrats on Monday named Warren as the keynote speaker for that evening, and they have to make time for heavy hitters who want to take whacks at Trump, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
And Hillary Clinton wants the 10 p.m. hours to include Americans who can speak to her priorities, like children of immigrants and mothers who have lost children to gun and police violence.