Local delegates to attend Democratic convention virtually amid pandemic – Buffalo News

She envisioned spending Monday – her 78th birthday – celebrating with thousands of other Democratic delegates on the crowded floor of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, kicking off a four-day made-for-TV production that would culminate with the nomination of the party’s candidate for president.

But this is now a coronavirus convention, so Syposs will spend the day as millions of Americans do every day these days: staring into a computer screen at home. There will be no guys with funny hats, no balloons suspended from the ceiling, no cheering crowds.

“I finally get to be a delegate – and there’s no convention I can go to,” Syposs said. “It’s such a disappointment to me.”

Like much of American life amid the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s Democratic National Convention has gone virtual – and that has meant an adjustment not just for Syposs, but for the party at large. While the change pretty much takes the life out of the party for the delegates, it gives the Democratic Party the chance to create a neater, more on-message prime-time program for the American people.

There will be no messy floor fights, no angry Bernie Sanders delegates making a show of their frustration with the primary voters’ quick decision to turn back to the center and nominate former Vice President Joe Biden for president.

Instead, the convention – running on the television networks and streaming online from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday – will be precisely the show the Democrats want you to see.

“The only limitation to a remarkably successful, exhilarating, inspiring convention is our imagination,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas E. Perez, a Buffalo native, said last week at a convention preview sponsored by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. “You’re going to see some really fun things, and I think people are going to come away from this excited.”

What’s missing

It’s been a long time since political conventions were what they once were: arena-sized equivalents of the smoke-filled back rooms where politicos made decisions.

For decades, the outcome of every convention has been preordained by primary voters who selected the presidential candidate – and in that way, this week’s Democratic gathering, as well as next week’s largely online Republican convention, fit the recent tradition.

But so much will be missing.

The state delegation breakfasts, where the party’s rising stars visit in search of connections and cash, are in some cases moving online. But as of Saturday morning, the New York State Democratic Committee had not yet even released a schedule of any such gatherings.

The balloon drops, the raucous floor demonstrations, the random run-ins with the powerful and famous? They’re gone. And Michael Plitt, the Genesee County Democratic chairman, thinks that’s a necessary shame.

“For a political junkie, it’s the greatest thing ever,” Plitt, an alternate delegate, said of the in-person conventions of the past. “But we have to think of the bigger picture and our health.”

Thanks to the pandemic, the real business of the convention – adopting the party platform and nominating Biden for president and California Sen. Kamala Harris for vice president – will take place electronically. Caucus meetings and other events will happen online, too.

“Obviously, we’re going to just be doing Zoom and whatever,” Syposs said. “That’s all we can do.”

With so much business going on remotely during on during the day, any dissension may well go unnoticed. And there is some dissension.

Ryan McHugh, a delegate for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said he and some other supporters of the failed democratic socialist candidate will be voting against the party platform because it doesn’t call for Medicare for All. But with the vote taking place online instead of on the floor of an arena with television cameras all around, it’s unclear how many people will notice.

“If we have potentially 800 votes against the platform, I think that can show that, you know, we’re not 100% down with this,” said McHugh, who’s from Dryden, in Tompkins County. “But I’m not sure how this can be publicized as adequately.”

To hear Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo tell it, though, it’s a good thing there’s not more dissension, a good thing the party didn’t have to sort out its future on the convention floor of a convention that has no floor. 

“I don’t know how you do a virtual floor fight,” Cuomo said. “I think if there was ever a convention that would lend itself to a virtual process, it was this convention, where you just don’t have the same level of controversy or indecision.”

The show

What, then, is this virtual convention going to look like?

“Programming will include both live and curated content originating from Milwaukee and other satellite cities, locations and landmarks across the country,” the convention’s organizing committee said.

That means the convention will be, well, both conventional and unconventional.

As usual, the party’s leading lights will give prime-time speeches. Cuomo will speak Monday, as will Sanders and former First Lady Michelle Obama. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and former President Bill Clinton will deliver major speeches Tuesday, the same night that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the party’s progressive young superstar – will give a 60-second prerecorded address.

That fact didn’t exactly thrill McHugh, the Sanders supporter. Noting that former Ohio Gov. John Kasich – a Republican – was given a longer speaking slot than Ocasio-Cortez, McHugh said: “I just don’t think that that’s a good representation of the party.”

The party’s 2016 candidate – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – will speak on Wednesday, as will former President Barack Obama and Harris, the vice presidential nominee.  

Biden’s acceptance speech highlights the Thursday program. And all week, the online speechifying will be interspersed with online musical performances from the likes of Leon Bridges, Billie Eilish and the Chicks.

Delegates like April Baskin, chairwoman of the Erie County Legislature, will be voting during the day and watching at night.

“I’ll be at my dining room table but I’m still just so honored and super, super excited,” she said.

The speeches and the musical performances are all pretty much standard fare for a modern political convention, but the Democrats are doing one thing that is very different. 

“We’re going to hear from everyday Americans who took Donald Trump at his word, and now understand that they can’t trust him,” said Perez, the party chairman. “You’re going to meet people you’ve never met before, and they will inspire you. And I think you’re going to come away understanding that Joe Biden truly is the person for this moment.”

This moment arrives, obviously, in the middle of a pandemic. What’s more, it’s a moment that looks like it’s going to last a while longer, noted former Erie County Democratic Chairman Len Lenihan, a delegate and longtime convention goer.

“Who knows? When Biden wins, which I’m confident he will, there might not even be a huge inauguration,” Lenihan said. “It might be a couple hundred people spread out in the Capitol somewhere.”