The Last Convention

So many simple pleasures are gone, casualties of the pandemic. Baseball games. Live concerts. Summertime parades. One civic ritual that’s neither simple nor necessarily pleasurable is also withering under the virus’s spread: the presidential nominating convention as we know it. Starting next week, the parties will hold stripped-down versions of the quadrennial gatherings to formalize the Donald Trump–Joe Biden matchup, creating, perhaps, a template for the future. It’s been evident for years the conventions have outlived their original purpose; there’s never any real mystery as to who will come away with the nomination. Yet they’ve also produced surprising speeches and unexpected dramas that have upended the nation’s politics. Those sorts of moments could be lost forever if the conventions don’t return in more than minimalist form.

In some ways, the choreographed conventions of old won’t be missed. “They’re completely obsolete—they never matter anymore,” Susan Estrich, who ran the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis’s 1988 campaign and has helped manage several