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:
“But she is early up and out,
To trim the year or strip its bones;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“We are in a period when old questions are settled and the new are not yet brought forward. Extreme party action, if continued in such a time, would ruin the party. Moderation is its only chance. The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“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)