Eight years later, the first night of the 2016 Democratic convention served as a pressure valve for Sanders' hardcore fans.
He was encouraged in this view a couple of years ago, when one of the competitors, entertaining its franchisees at a national convention, served a meal catered by none other than the local Kentucky Fried Chicken man.
The daytime events are designed to get the vice president on the television news every night, with the convention serving as something of a late-evening coda that reinforces the message of the day.
For an example where the distinction between constitutional law and convention served as the basis of a court ruling, see the Canadian Patriation Reference, [1981] 1 S.C.R. at 870.
Austin argued that the laws really meant that no one could petition on behalf of the people unless the people had been consulted, and the convention served as that consultation.
He has been a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Democratic National Committee, where he delivered the closing benediction of the 2008 Democratic Convention; served on the National Religious Leaders Advisory Committee of the 2008 Democratic Presidential campaign and currently serves on the Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group at the U. S. Department of State.
For four decades, the nominating conventions served as great gladiator coliseums for the three old-line networks and their anchors.
Polls of likely voters can sometimes be more sensitive to the effects of a party convention, since one of the purposes that conventions serve is to make political partisans more enthusiastic.
New York has a storied history of holding conventions, serving as host when Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter in 1976 and also when Democrats held the longest convention in American political history, when the party took more than 100 ballots to nominate John W. Davis, who went on to lose to Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
What social good, if any, do conventions serve?
