Friday, September 05, 2008

I Suppose I Could Google This...

... but do the Democrats always have their convention before the Republicans? Or is it like baseball where the league that wins the All-Star game gets home field advantage (with the party in power being the "winner" of the last "All-Star game"?). Just wonderin"...

5 comments:

  1. Your first bleg!

    I believe it's the case that the party with the incumbent president goes second, at least in the modern era. Half-hearted Googling didn't get me a succinct statement of this rule (or convention!) from an authoritative source, but the Wikipedia entries for the Democratic and Republican support my memory.

    The past forty years:

    2008 -- Bush (R) incumbent:
    Dems: August 25-28
    Reps: September 1-4

    2008 -- Bush (R) incumbent:
    Dems: July 26-29
    Reps: August 30-September 2

    2000 -- Clinton (D) incumbent:
    Reps: July 31-August 3, 2000
    Dems: August 14-17, 2000

    1996 -- Clinton (D) incumbent:
    Reps: August 12-15
    Dems: August 26-29

    1992 -- Bush (R) incumbent:
    Dems: July 13-16
    Reps: August 17-20

    1988 -- Reagan (R) incumbent:
    Dems: July 18-21
    Reps: August 15-18

    1984 -- Reagan (R) incumbent:
    Dems: July 16-19
    Reps: August 20-23

    1980 -- Carter (D) incumbent:
    Reps: July 14-17
    Dems: August 11-14

    1976 -- Ford (R) incumbent:
    Dems: July 12-15
    Reps: August 16-19

    1972 -- Nixon (R) incumbent:
    Dems: July 10-13
    Reps: August 21-23

    1968 -- Johnson (D) incumbent:
    Reps: August 5-8
    Dems: August 26-29

    By the way, half-hearted Googling did lead me to a forum on Sean Hannity's site, in which the wingnuts were whining about the Democrats "always" getting to go first. For example:

    "It seems the Democrates always get the upper hard no matter what."

    Don't click that last link unless you have strong drink at hand. It's a powerful argument against an open Internet, not to mention democracy.

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  2. ... support my memory.

    Not, however, well enough to cause me to remember to preface this phrase with the word conventions.

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  3. Brendan,
    Hey, maybe it is my first bleg. And it worked! Thanks for the info!

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  4. BTW, Brendan, I clicked on the link and, for some reason, my IP is banned from the site...

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  5. The Hannity forums site? That's interesting. I wonder if it's to do with your ISP in particular, or any overseas ISP. Knowing Hannity, I wouldn't be surprised at the latter.

    I don't like banning, especially just for viewing, but if you had to have one site on the entire Web that you couldn't go to, that'd be a good one.

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