2162 Votes
From The West Wing (Season 6, Episode 22)
Categories:
Run time: 4:14
Clip Description: Candidate for President Santos, at a split nominating convention, discussing what it means to be a Democrat
American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip discusses the concepts of delegates in brokered conventions and back-room dealings in politics.
Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip discusses conventions and the back-room discussions that held within politics.
Discussion Questions
- Santos uses a deadlocked convention as a stage for an argument about what the party is for. In practice that stage no longer exists: since the reforms of the early 1970s, nominations have been settled in primaries, and no major-party convention has needed a second ballot in more than seventy years. Was moving the decision from the convention floor to the primaries a democratization of the parties, or did it just hand the decision to a different small group, namely donors, early-state voters and the press? Make both cases.
- Parties are private associations, but their primaries are administered and paid for by state governments, and their rules determine who appears on the general election ballot. Should a party be free to pick its nominee any way it likes, including by a room of officials, or does performing a public function bring public obligations? The Supreme Court has more than once protected parties’ associational rights against primary rules imposed by states; find one of those decisions and see how far the protection actually runs.
- The fight in the scene is over what it means to belong to the party. Draw the boundary for whichever party or side you are closest to: name a position that would put someone outside it. Then ask whether you would have drawn that line in the same place ten years ago, and what the answer tells you about whether party identity is about ideas or about people.
Clip hosted on Critical Commons.