Reply #13: The last two seasons of the West Wing show why we don't want a deadlocked convention

[Hippo_Tron]

Modern conventions set the tone for the election season and they show the nominee in a very favorable light. It also makes sure that America knows the candidates' personal story and that is very very important.

If we have a brokered convention this time it creates a problem in that we don't get the free national TV time to define our nominee. In Hillary's case that means that people know her from her days as first lady and she doesn't get an opportunity to present herself as the "New Hillary". It also doesn't give her a chance to talk about how she worked for the Childrens' Defense Fund, etc. In Obama's case it means that people are like, "who the hell is this guy?"

Meanwhile John McCain gets free national TV time to tell the entire country about how he was a POW in Vietnam.

Sadly undecided voters don't vote on the issues, they vote based on how they feel about the candidates. Three days of people talking about the principles of the Democratic Party just isn't going to be any help in November.

The scenario in the West Wing showed this pretty accurately. The Democrats had a brokered convention and the GOP did not. The GOP nominee (Vinick) started out with a huge lead on the Democratic nominee (Santos) largely because Vinick came off at the convention as someone who was ready to lead and people didn't have a clue who Santos was.

If there had been no brokered convention, the Democrats would've been able to show off the fact that Santos had served in the marines in the first Gulf War and has continued to serve in the reserves and that would've been a huge boost for him.