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Railroads and unions reached a tentative contract agreement Thursday morning, averting the threat of an imminent strike that would have ravaged the nation’s economy. The Biden administration intervened in negotiations to push both parties toward a compromise ahead of Friday, the first day that workers could legally walk out. The two largest rail unions said Thursday that the deal provides key wins for workers that weren’t included in the previous contract proposals. Here are five key gets in the agreement, according to the unions.

(CNN) Some national and state Democratic party leaders concerned about Sen. Bernie Sanders' candidacy are willing to risk a messy, brokered national convention this summer, which could be potentially damaging to the party, to prevent the self-described Democratic socialist from becoming the nominee, The New York Times reported. Of the 93 superdelegates the Times interviewed, a majority expressed an "overwhelming opposition" to naming Sanders the party's nominee if he wins a plurality of pledged delegates before the Democratic National Convention in July. The vast majority also predicted that no candidate would secure the party's nomination during the primaries and that...

Proportional allocation, the sheer number of candidates, their financial resources, the compactness of the primary schedule, and Bloomberg’s specter all raise the probability of a contested convention to a level underestimated by the national media.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, refused Sunday to rule out becoming the nominee again this year at a brokered convention, though he insisted he couldn’t imagine that happening. “I don’t think anyone in our party should say, ‘Oh no, even if the people of the party wanted me to be president, I would say no to it.’ No one is going to say that,” Mr. Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Mitt Romney said Sunday that GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz winning two primary states this weekend proves the Texas senator can stop front-runner Donald Trump, but declined to rule out his own White House scenario. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the Republicans' 2012 presidential nominee, repeated remarks from last week, telling “Fox News Sunday” that he wouldn’t launch an eleventh-hour campaign for president. But he declined to reject being “drafted” at the GOP convention in July to be the party’s general election candidate. “It would be absurd to say that if I were drafted I’d say no,” Romney said....

How would a brokered GOP convention work? Mar. 05, 2016 - 4:15 - Larry Sabato explains the process on 'Fox & Friends'

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)79% is plotting to take the Republican nomination away from Donald Trump using surreptitious tactics at a so-called "brokered convention," according to an audio recording of his campaign manger in a private meeting with high dollar donors in Manhattan obtained exclusively by Breitbart News. Last Wednesday evening in New York, according to CNN, Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan met privately with a group of supporters and top donors to chart Rubio's path forward heading into Super Tuesday after abysmal performances from the first-term Florid Senator so far. During the meeting, Sullivan walked Rubio's money men through the...

Come on, man. It’s the holidays before the primaries. Aren’t we supposed to play out the worst possible scenarios as if they have any significant chance of coming to fruition? The estimable and seasoned analyst Michael Barone instead drops lumps of coal in bloggers’ stockings with just nine days to go before Christmas to tell us that Santa Brokered-Convention is just a myth that your grandparents told you to make you behave, or something: I have bad news for those looking forward to a deadlocked convention. It. Isn’t. Going. To. Happen.That’s because it’s impossible for party national conventions to serve...

In business there is something called “sunk costs” which refers to funds that have been spent and are unrecoverable. At any given point sunk costs are irrelevant to the decisions going forward. An example of this would be a company that has spent a billion dollars building a plant and now has to choose whether or not to spend another billion dollars hiring staff and actually operating the plant. At the point of the decision the only thing that should be relevant to the decision makers is what makes best sense for the firm going forward. Does the company...

"Much of the maneuvering would come down to fights over arcane bits of parliamentary procedure because state parties, not the national GOP, are the ones who really hold the power at brokered conventions. Each state party operates under a different set of voting rules, and each campaign’s ability to understand which state’s delegation can do what — and when — could be a deciding factor.“Every state is different. Some states, you vote for the candidate to whom you were pledged in perpetuity. Others, you’re released after the first ballot; others, you’re released after the second ballot; others you’re released after...

With a breakaway front-runner still yet to emerge in the GOP race, political observers and senior Republican strategists are beginning to seriously contemplate what a brokered convention in Tampa Bay might look like. A candidate must win the support of 1,144 delegates to become the Republican nominee for president. While most commentators agree that Mitt Romney is the only candidate with a realistic shot of reaching that number before the convention in August, that outcome is by no means assured, especially after his losses in Alabama and Mississippi. Brokered conventions in the modern era have been exceedingly rare. The last...

“And just a more corporate problem is I think our party and particularly our movement, the conservative movement, does have more of a problem with con men and charlatans than the Democratic Party,” she said. “I mean, the incentives seem to be set up to allow people — as long as you have a band of a few million fanatical followers, you can make money. The Democrats have managed to figure out how not to do that.”

What is it about the pundits that they can’t seem to get that WE, the American People, have no problem with a “brokered” Convention for the GOP? Why are they so afraid of allowing this process? I just heard Dick Morris declare that we NEED a candidate, asking principled people to just “vote for Romney!” Not because he is the best person, but because he, Dick Morris, believes we need to short circuit the process, and, in the process, disenfranchise the very people we will need to vote for our eventual candidate. Way to get out the vote, Dick! We...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's struggles in Michigan are fueling speculation that Republicans might have to resort to a doomsday scenario and launch a frantic search for a 2012 savior at their nominating convention in late August....How did Republicans get to this point? Romney's failure to get conservatives fully behind him and put down yet another challenger in the party - this time it's Rick Santorum - is causing angst in the party. Many senior Republicans do not think Santorum, a social conservative caught up in the U.S. culture wars over issues like abortion and contraception, has a...

I'm thinking the only way we will be able to beat Obama will be to have a brokered GOP Convention and a "dark horse" candidate rise out of the ashes. Do I think it will happen? Heck no. So, we are, as my granny used to say: "In a mell of a hess". The GOP Candidates currently running, and the drop-out, Michele Bachmann, have beaten, bruised and bloodied each other so badly that we’re going to make doggone sure we send a nominee into the General Election damaged beyond repair; making victory easy for Obama. The Dems are loving our...

What is a brokered convention? What causes it? Would it be a GOOD thing for the Republicans to have this year?

WASHINGTON — What happens if the primaries don't produce presidential nominees for one party — or the other — or both? For Democrats, the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama race could continue through the primaries. If John Edwards stays in, he could win enough delegates to prevent either Clinton or Obama from securing enough convention delegates to win the nomination. On the Republican side, the once implausible seems possible. Three candidates — Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Mitt Romney — each have won important early contests. All show strength among disparate party constituencies. A fourth candidate, Rudy Giuliani, hasn't seriously competed in...

"Brokered" Convention? The "brokering" has already taken place. It seems to me that the evidence overwhelmingly points to Cain and Huck having made a pact together. Neither has a chance alone - only together can they pull enough combined support to get one (AKA both) of them a shot at high executive positions after this election. Together they can effectively deny enough delegates to Romney, Thompson, or Giuliani. Neither Cain nor Huck will end up with a majority going to the convention - until the other consents to be VP or whatever post is offered. It will be a "brokered"...

Last week I described the Democratic presidential delegate selection process, outlining why capturing the 2008 nomination included more wild cards than a stacked poker deck. Democrats' heavy reliance of proportionally allocated delegates, as well as the large number of unpledged "super delegates," means several candidates could survive the primary season. At a minimum, there is a strong possibility that contenders other than the ultimate nominee will come to the Denver convention in August with a significant amount of delegate support. Interestingly, Republicans find themselves in a similar situation, but for different reasons. Unlike the Democrats' proportional delegate selection system and...

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