How covering the Democrats in 2016 was utterly different to 2020

Some people are already declaring it dead.

After the Democrats pulled off four nights of largely seamless live streamed speeches, and videos packages, mixed up with the occasional song or musical performances, some people are ready to suggest we will never go back to the traditional party convention.

Among them is veteran broadcaster Lawrence O’Donnell, who – as the fireworks lit up over Wilmington, Delaware on Thursday night, tweeted: “Best convention I’ve ever seen. 1st time I’ve ever been able to listen to every speaker. Please don’t ever fill up another convention hall. Please don’t waste $millions on plane tickets & hotels. Please don’t burn all that jet fuel.”

He added: “Make this the new normal.”

Lots of people will agree. One of the things Democrats proved by their experiment, regardless of whether or not you agreed with what Joe Biden and others said, was that the technology exists to pull off something like that.

As the coronavirus pandemic drags on, and those people fortunate to have jobs that can be done remotely get used to working from home, and dread the idea of retuning to the office and losing hundreds of hours of their lives on commuting, so thoughts turn to matters such as political conventions.

Is there really a need to take over a city for an entire week, swamp its hotels, tie up the entire police force, just to fight ones way to a cramped convention centre where the wi-fi does not work and you waste 30 minutes lining up for a sandwich?

“I think that we won’t go back to things as they were,” says Mike Fraioli, a long-time DC-based Democratic strategist, who has only missed one convention since 1980. “It’s too old school. We don’t need to go back.”

Fraioli suggests at the very minimum, the future will see a hybrid of this year’s convention, and traditional meetings – lots of people streamed in different parts of the country, lots of video packages, lots of music.

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He said the an insight into how silly holding a huge in-person convention can be, came in 2008 when Democrats descended upon Denver, Colorado, to watch Barack Obama accept the nomination. The city’s police force did not have personnel required, he says, so police officers from across the nation were dispatched to help. “It was crazy,” he says. “If you asked a cop for directions, they couldn’t help you.”

What would we miss by not having an in-person event? In 2016, the Democrats held their convention in Philadelphia It was hot, and humid, there were not enough hotel rooms, and the security lines to get into the Wells Fargo Centre had little shade.

Lots of people present, in particular the supporters of Bernie Sanders who just days earlier had been revealed to have been undermined by senior Democratic officials, were very angry.

Yet, it was also utterly fabulous. On the streets outside City Hall one could chat to Sanders’s supporters and listen to them vent their anger about what they considered had been a stitch-up of their man.

You could seek calm and respite at an interview event hosted by the Washington Post every day at a dark-timbered bar that had free snacks and endless glasses of sparkling water, or whatever else you wanted.

When you needed a bit of distraction, you could attempt to record an interview while bouncing on an inflatable castle in the shape of the White House set up by the One Campaign to draw attention to inequality.

Inside the arena one could mingle on the floor and chat to delegates from across the country. You could listen, in awe, as Bernie Sanders summoned dignity and bravery beyond measure to urge his supporters to put aside their rightful anger, and vote for his rival, Hillary Clinton, who benefited from the DNC’s intervention. The country must not, he said, allow Donald Trump to be president.

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You could feel the room swell when Michelle Obama took to the stage and tell people when “they go low, we go high”. You could ask people to sum up with a single word how they felt when Barack Obama addressed the convention – “brilliant”, “inspiration”, “legendary”, “proud”.

It was, in short, journalism as one knew it. And it was exciting. And it was fun.

But things change, sometimes rapidly. Looking back to the Democrats’ convention in 2004 when a certain state senator from Illinois lit up the night, it feels crazy that a British reporter’s account of an event held on a Tuesday evening, would not appear in print until Thursday’s paper. This convention, as in 2016, our live blog carried words and video from the convention almost instantaneously, while anyone around the world could watch events live if they wished.

Next week, the Republicans are holding their convention, a combination of live streamed speeches, with some actual events. Having watched the Democrats to se what they did well and what not so well, Republicans are still working on their plan.

We do know Trump is likely to appear every night. And we know they while Democrats could turn to the likes of Michelle and Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren and Sarah Cooper, the Republicans special guests are going to include MyPillow creator Mike Lindell, who has been touting an unproven cure for Covid, a couple who wielded guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in St Louis, and a former student from Covington Catholic High School student whose 2019 interaction with a Native American elder in Washington DC while wearing a red MAGA cap, went viral.

Matt Mackowiak, a veteran Republican strategist, says he thinks that in four years, people will want to have a convention again.

“There were some things the Democrats’ did well,’ he says.

“But the speeches felt flat without a live audience to applaud. For instance, when Michelle Obama spoke, I thought the silence was deafening.”