Matt Stoller asks: Why do we still have conventions?

by Ken

In a Naked Capitalism post called "The Fake Election: 10 Arguments The Republicans Aren't Making," Matt Stoller starts out with a pretty plausible answer to the question a lot of us have been pondering recently: Why do the major parties still hold presidential nominating conventions. Answer: They're trade shows for their players.

Even authoritarian systems require legitimacy to retain the support of the governed, and the new authoritarian America is no exception. Since 2004, the brilliant public journalism advocate Jay Rosen has been asking, what is the point of a political convention? No news is made, yet over 15,000 journalists show up, ostensibly to cover the pomp. But everyone knows that coverage isn’t so much the point; these conventions trade shows for the political class, where party insiders, journalists, politicians, celebrities, corporate types, and lobbyists mingle to organize political hierarchies. The public is simply irrelevant, a mass of jeering and cheering message imbibers or apathetic and cynical former citizens, people who are unseen behind their TV screens. The only fresh elements are protesters, and they are met by a police state, lest they disrupt the insider deal-making.

In fact, elections, over the past few years, have become mechanisms for sustaining the legitimacy of this political class, not contests designed to be won by either side. Neither side would ever admit to not trying to win, at least publicly. Privately, political consultants will count their winnings happily after each election, regardless of the outcome. So the way to see the lack of competitiveness now is to examine the moves that both parties are not making.

The rest of the post is work a look too, though it turns out to be not quite what it seems at first, with the suggestion that the R's are sort of tanking the election. Originally I wasn't going to go into the actual arguments, since I think we all understand that in most cases it's perfectly obvious why the argument wouldn't have made it to, say, Frank Luntz poll- or focus-group-testing, or if it did why it wouldn't have survived the process, and the arguments collectively seem to represent more than anything a fancy but roundabout way of saying, "Ooh, those Democrats make me so-o-o mad." This is certainly an understandable sentiment, but it's not quite what's supposedly being argued here. Anyway, here are the boldface versions of the ten arguments -- consult the source for Matt's explanations.

1) The Tax Cheat Administration
2) Obama Doesn’t Keep His Promises to You
3) Obama Administration, Brought to You By Wall Street
4) Obama Administration’s Handling of the Foreclosure Crisis
5) Inequality Skyrocketing Under Obama
6) Obama Administration Is Corrupt
7) Obama Pushing Offshoring of American Jobs
8) Subversion of the Rule of Law
9) Suppression of Dissent
10) Endless war

In the end Matt acknowledges that these arguments, beyond being highly improbable for the R's to advance, are things they'd be painfully uncomfortable talking about -- to the extent, he suggests, that they'd rather lose the election.

These arguments, if put into widespread play, could keep voters at home, or even shift some groups away from Obama. And because of outside SuperPACs, none of these arguments have to be made by Romney himself, there are a host of groups that could make them. Though you might think it would be appallingly hypocritical if the Republicans made these arguments, when has that ever stopped them before? It isn’t honesty and integrity preventing the GOP from going there. Or if it is, then one would have to concede that the Republicans are running a principled campaign, on plutocracy. More likely, the answer is that winning the race isn’t as important as ensuring that the political class is protected from democracy.

The Republicans don’t want to discuss tax cheating, offshoring, corruption, inequality, dissent, the rule of law, endless war, or Wall Street criminality. They’d rather lose. It’s not that they want to lose in 2012, it’s just that they aren’t going to go after every vote. It’s the same reason no one talks about how Romney is a flip-flopper anymore, or points out that Romney is the architect of Obamacare, or was a moderate Republican governor in Massachusetts. Those arguments are worse for the political class, and better for the public. And that is how elections operate in authoritarian America. The secondary goal is to win the election, the primary goal is to keep the public out of the deal-making.

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