Once it was the occasion for a party to get its people together, write a platform and nominate candidates. Today it's the occasion for the party to crown its nominee and start the campaign.
We haven't had a contested convention since the Fifties, thanks to the primary and caucus system. Kind of takes the fun out of the convention.
And that is why favorite sons and dark horses no longer exist.
The Democrats had a contested convention in 1960, and the Republicans had a contested convention in 1976 when Ford squeaked past Reagan. THe conventions used to be fun to watch because the average person really didn’t know how it was going to turn out. At least that is what we thought.
I grew up in the Central Valley of CA, and we did not get TV there until the mid ‘50s. I remember in 1952 when they brought in a special feed to bring TV to our Memorial Auditorium in downtown Fresno. Everybody could come for free, and we watch both conventions there. It was doubly exciting because we could watch instead of listening on the radio and because we got to see this new-fangled invention called TV. Although San Francisco and Los Angeles already had TV, residents of Fresno did not because the mountains blocked the signal. We had to build an actual TV broadcasting station before we could get TV in out homes.
My husband started college at Northwestern U near Chicago in 1956. His best friend was the son of the British Consul General and he got press tickets for the 2 college Freshmen to attend both the Democrat and the Republican conventions — both held in Chicago that year. My husband says that it was so interesting to sit in the same room with all the Party bosses and watch them caucus.