The original idea is
here. A proposal is currently circulating with a time table and description of how to run the open convention.
Recent reaction to the poor quality of the proposed slogans for the Democratic Party shows the need for a different process, one that joins together the fundamental basis of the Democratic Party, and emotionally connects what is wrong with America's direction, with how to fix it by what is right with America.
The Democratic Party's avowed message is that the Republicans represent a culture of corruption, and have engaged in abuse of power. The party has to run on a compact rhetoric that joins this diagnosis of the problem, with what will solve it. The often cited "Contract with America" was based on the "you can't trust Congress, but you can trust us." The answer is that closed government creates corruption, chaos and confusion, and the answer is a very Democratic idea: open government, openly arrived at.
That is why the Democrats need an Open Convention.
There is a wide and growing belief among Democrats, from elected officials to the party base, that 2006 represents a unique opportunity for the party. The term "realigning election" has begun to crop up, not merely because of the current low poll numbers for George W. Bush, but because many of the problems that are creating disquiet and agitation in the general public are structural, and not transitory. Job creation has been poor through the entire economic cycle, when combined housing inflation it is pushing people out of the ability to move or change jobs, Iraq seems to have no payoff and no exit, there are signs of massive corruption in the Republican Congress.
Realigning elections come when a large swath of the general public no longer trusts the party in power. The last such election was 1994, which has been consolidated over the last 11 years with a gradual replacement of conservative southern Democrats with reactionary Republicans, many of whom are not originally from the South. The Democratic Party has been unable to flip a similarly large geographic base to make up for the seats lost in this process. While the Senate has changed hands in incremental elections, realignment of both houses has, for the last century, been the result of a larger than normal shift in power.
A realigning election means a nationalized election, one which forces the opposition party to play defense, and accept losses, even in areas where they are otherwise dominant. This allows the rising party to gain seats in its target areas, and to broaden its appeal. But a national election requires a national message. When the realigning election is also a Presidential election, as it was in 1932, the message comes from the candidate at the top. However, mid-term realignments must come from the congressional wing of the party itself, and must focus around a clear emotional connection with the public.
This gut level connection drove the Republican "Contract With America" in 1994. In essence, Americans felt bad, and they felt that Congress would not be responsive until its members were under the same threats of job insecurity and hand to mouth financial existence as most working people.
There is also a growing realization that we no longer live in the era of television dominance. While media still moves the majority, it is no longer the only force. To win the Democrats will have to tap three spheres of public support and activity: the party base, which connects with the party through Democratic party organizations, broad based organizations such as labor unions, and through groups closely tied to the Democratic Party. The second group connects with politics through media, through single issue advocacy groups, and organizations tied to the media ecosphere. The third group, the newest in political activity, but also the fastest growing and most visible, connects with the Democratic Party the way sports fans connect with their team, and who interact with the party as much through communication with their fellow fans. In marketing terms, the first group is geographic and economic, the second demographic and media, and the third group is psychographic and community.
Building a message in the media era was a top down affair: a core of people took available polling and gut instinct, combined them into a series of talking points, perhaps tested them with focus groups and test runs - and then pressured a top down cascade based on media events, advertising and instructions to candidates to stay on message. When the nighly news commanded an overwhelming share of public visibility and was town square of America, this process could be effective. It is not clear whether it generated incremental gains by itself, we can't know whether some other agenda other than Gingrich's Contract would have prevailed. But it had three major advantages. First it allowed Gingrichian forces to claim credit for the victory and take power - pushing aside the Republican old guard. Second, it gave people a reason to do what they wanted to do. Third, it put the Democratic Party on the defensive, because the Democratic Congress had failed to move two of the three agenda items that had been implicitly promised in 1992's election.
In the present, it is essential to unify all of the spheres of activity. As the 2004 campaign showed, while it is still possible to win a narrow party mandate through winning the party base and then having a powerful media campaign, it was not possible to win nationally, nor to create a national message. As a result, the Democratic Party made no gains in the House, and seats in the Senate.
Recently Walter Cronkite proposed the idea of a mid-term convention to draft a platform. It is an idea that has wide resonance, because the hope of gathering together is one that Americans feel very powerfully in a world that does not seem to be as safe as it once was. However, the form is problematic: the public wants to see conventions that are moments of unity, which makes them being actual deliberative moments impossible. Even the primary process is becoming one where the rank and file expresses their affirmation of decisions already made.
This means that there must be a new process where the party can draw people into the Democratic conversation, and convince reliable voting independents to vote on the issues - where they are overwhelmingly Democratic in their outlook - rather than on outrage and anecdote, where they vote for Republicans as the party of aggressive, even violent, action.
So what is an open convention? An open convention is a way of combining the three means of campaigning - through the party base, through the media and micro-issue politicking and through the New Politics - into one ongoing process that will create and refine a message that will be the basis for Democratic victory in 2006.
Why so? Because it connects to the belief in the American public that they are not being listened to, and that it is time for change. The Democratic Party cannot be coy about this, but must, instead, take the idea of change head on. The present slogans, which are terrible, attempt to tell the people who want more of the same, only better run, and the people who want a different direction, that the Democrats are with them. This will lose, simply because everyone who wants more of the same, will vote Republican. The Democrats will not credibly be the "we are the other Republican Party" and win in 2006. Instead, they will get buried as the party base stays home. while the Republican base turns out.
Instead, the future lies in getting the Democratic Party to draw moderates into a conversation about what kind of progressive nation that they want. Whether the slogan plays on nostalgia, hope or progress is less important than that it be direct in only one way. Never have a slogan that is the set up line for a monolog line "The Democrats have a new slogan, 'America can do better.' And after looking at the Democratic candidates, I'm inclined to agree with them."
America can do better than closed government and top down thinking, and it is time that the Democratic Party went out and proved it.