An open convention necessary for Democrats who value democracy

Isn’t it ironic?

For a Democratic Party that’s spent four years repeating the mantra “Democracy is on the ballot,” it turns out that may not have been the case after all — in its own nominating process.

After a primary season in which only a few marginal candidates dared to challenge incumbent Joe Biden, who got roughly 14 million votes in various primaries, the calamitous last few weeks — and a conveniently timed COVID diagnosis that takes the president off the road — have led to reconsideration of Biden’s political future.

Though the “stubborn” prez may not want to go, he’s being pushed by everyone who matters in his party, including former President Barack Obama, Senate leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

And some say it could happen this weekend, giving political reporters who might be bored after Milwaukee something to do.

Democrats have several ways to handle this, and some are more boring than others.

There is a case to be made that VP Kamala Harris should be the party’s de facto nominee, allowing her easy access to the Biden-Harris war chest. The pros: She’s been one heartbeat away for 3½  years, she would appeal to black voters and women, and she’s a known quantity.

And if Biden releases his delegates and leaves the presidency, all the better for this play.

But the gambit’s not without downside risk.

The cons? She would be running on the Biden-Harris legacy, which the re-election campaign has downplayed in favor of Project 2025 hysteria and personal attacks on Trump.

Harris may have a honeymoon with mainstream media as the nominee, but there is scant evidence she would juice the ticket or stop the Trump surge in states observers expected to be battlegrounds just weeks ago.

And there is less evidence she would stop the GOP from expanding the map to states that haven’t been in play since Reagan’s 1984 re-election.

So with Harris not being a safer option than her boss, what should Democrats do?

Here’s a suggestion: Throw the nomination open, and make what was intended to be a thoroughly stage-managed Democratic National Convention next month actually matter.

Dispense with the canned speeches and syrupy video packages and warnings about the other side, and do what Democrats have tried to avoid in one preordained nomination cycle after another. Spend the first few days letting candidates from that reputedly very deep Democratic bench make their case to delegates who are free to vote their consciences.

Would a contested convention be good TV? You bet.

It would give the next generation of Democrats a chance to stake a course for the party they really haven’t been able to in recent years, which saw strong steering currents toward Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 — efforts intended in both cases to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination and protect institutional power inside the party itself.

They could move beyond making canned arguments against Trump and J.D. Vance and instead litigate the issues voters care about — persistent inflation, American military involvement overseas, the hollowing of the middle class.

The Democrats have ceded these issues to Republicans in their fervor to maintain the fiction that a clearly deteriorated president is competent. But a contested convention would allow them to litigate those matters rather than cling to the prerogatives of the status quo.

The open-convention strategy would allow Democrats to recalibrate what has been a dismal narrative in recent weeks, one their shopworn spokespeople and consultants weren’t ready for.

They anticipated “lawfare” would leave Trump in court all summer. It did not.

They assumed pouring money into pro-abortion messaging and other segmented marketing would keep voters on side. Polls say that’s not the case.

Voters expect and deserve better than a rerun of the 2020 campaign, and Democrats won’t win with the current playbook. Their voters are less motivated than Trump backers, as survey after survey shows.

With this in mind, it’s time for the political professionals to dispense with a strategy of diminishing returns, give the people a show, let the delegates do something meaningful for once and present a dynamism and unpredictability the party hasn’t seen since Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

It’s their only hope.