2008 Democratic National Convention - Early Party Division

Early Party Division

With close delegate counts for Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, there was early speculation of the first brokered convention in decades. Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean sought to avoid such a circumstance.

In addition to the possibility of a brokered convention, a dispute over seating delegates from Florida and Michigan led some to compare the year's convention with the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which ended in a divided party and unhappiness over the outcome. This speculation ended when Obama was projected the Democratic candidate for president on June 3, 2008, and Clinton officially announced later that week that she was suspending her campaign and was fully endorsing Obama.

Read more about this topic:  2008 Democratic National Convention

Famous quotes containing the words early, party and/or division:

    Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.
    Fred Rogers (20th century)

    A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
    John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

    Major [William] McKinley visited me. He is on a stumping tour.... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass. It seems to me to be bad “politics,” and of no use.... It is a stale issue. An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.... Two ways are open to succeed in the South: 1. A division of the white voters. 2. Education of the ignorant. Bloody-shirt utterances prevent division.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)