Goodbye and good riddance to national political conventions

Democrats around the country will gather around computer screens and smartphones next week for a strange new version of a timeworn political ritual: their party’s presidential convention.

They won’t flood into Milwaukee and crowd into a noisy sports arena on Aug. 17 for four nights of hoopla. They won’t hobnob with party elders, campaign donors or up-and-coming politicians.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made those traditions impossible — and the conventions will almost surely be better for it.

Ever since 1948, when convention proceedings were first broadcast on television, the quadrennial events have slowly morphed from authentic political gatherings into slickly produced infomercials.

This year, the conventions can finally be honest about what they are.

There will still be roll call votes, but they’ll only be for show; the nominees were chosen months ago.

The old-style conventions weren’t particularly good TV; they were live pageants adapted for the small screen, often awkwardly. The live action — make that live inaction — got in the way.

This year, at last, that pretense can be dropped. There will be almost no live sessions, only speeches and video segments.

These will be television shows, pure and simple.

Instead of lame infomercials pretending to be conventions, they will openly and proudly be giant infomercials, a quintessentially American art form.

I expect they’ll be more watchable, and maybe even more informative, than when they were staged in sports arenas.

“They’re being designed to serve the viewers, not the delegates,” Chuck Todd, the political director of NBC News, told me. “That should make for better television.”

A made-for-video convention might even prompt broadcast and cable networks to scale back their habit of cutting away from speeches for analysis from pundits, she ventured.

Todd and other television planners said they’re largely adapting their traditional templates — live coverage of major speeches, with punditry in between — for the new format.

“My fear is that they’re going to give us a lot of difficult choices,” he said. “What’s the line between serving the viewer, including the viewer who may want to cheer for his or her team, and simply screening an infomercial?”

Democratic strategists want their convention to reintroduce Joe Biden to voters who have a blurry impression of him.

They will air a glossy biopic that emphasizes Biden’s time as vice president under Barack Obama and his image as the nation’s most empathetic politician.

They express confidence that Biden’s acceptance speech will dispel Trump’s allegations that the 77-year-old candidate is, as the president put it recently, “mentally shot” — an absurdly low bar he should clear without difficulty.

The online convention will feature a prime time appearance by Barack and Michelle Obama, and a tribute to the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. Biden plans to give his acceptance speech from his home in Delaware.

That’s not only to protect Biden’s health; it’s to emphasize another Democratic theme, their insistence on following medical recommendations to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

Republican plans appear less certain beyond an in-person meeting of delegates in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Aug. 24 to formally nominate President Donald Trump.

Campaign officials say they will present granular details of Trump’s plans for a second term, attack “radical elements” that they claim control Biden’s team and present a “nightly surprise.”

Trump will deliver his acceptance speech on Aug. 27. But he might also drop in (digitally) on one or two other nights; he did that in person at his 2016 convention in Cleveland.

The Trump team is also working on a biopic recounting his first four years. It’s expected to argue that Trump’s leadership prevented the pandemic from getting worse and echo his promise that the economy will boom as soon as he’s reelected.

Delegates, donors, journalists and others who once flocked to conventions may mourn the loss of the spectacle, the noise, and the chance to mingle at receptions and meals.

But the vast majority of voters, who never got invited, won’t miss a thing.