AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the site of the Republican National Convention this week. We’ve expanded our coverage to two hours each day. Check our website or your local station to get the expanded coverage.

Over the weekend, California Congressmember Adam Schiff warned donors Democrats would lose the presidency, control of the Senate and miss out on the chance to reclaim the House, unless President Biden steps aside. Adam Schiff, who’s running for California’s U.S. Senate seat in November, reportedly made the comments during a private fundraising dinner in New York. Despite mounting fears over Biden’s ability to beat Trump following his disastrous first debate, Democrats appear to be moving ahead with plans to hold a virtual vote confirming Biden as their nominee weeks before the Democratic National Convention begins in Chicago on August 19th.

We’re joined now again by John Nichols, The Nation’s national affairs correspondent. His latest piece is headlined “If Democratic Leaders Suck the Life Out of Their 2024 Convention, They Will Damage Party Prospects in November.”

So, John, we had you back on. We bumped into you yesterday. We were going into the convention last night. You were going out. We were asking you where you were going. You said you were here to cover the RNC, but you found yourself spending so much of your time dealing with the Democrats. Why is that? What exactly is happening?

JOHN NICHOLS: Sure. It’s a big story. In fact, in some ways, it might be as big or bigger story than what we’re dealing with right here, because next month Democrats will gather in Chicago, and they’re renominating a president. That’s supposed to be a pretty standard, almost boring, procedure — except, of course, we have all the controversy with Biden.

Now, here’s the interesting thing. The Democratic National Committee, and apparently the Biden campaign, have been agitating for quite a while now to move the roll call vote, which is supposed to take place during the convention in late August, up to — initially, they talked sometime around August 7th. Now they’re talking about moving it to perhaps as soon as next week. So, Joe Biden could be nominated for president next week, even though the convention is almost a month away.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second. If you can explain? Because this is a time — it’s sort of a very colorful thing at both the RNC and the DNC. Each state says, “We nominate.” They wear cheese on their head. They do whatever. No offense to you here in Wisconsin.

JOHN NICHOLS: It’s not actually cheese. It’s a styrofoam cheese hat.

AMY GOODMAN: Right, and each one hails their state, but then nominates their candidate. Now, we had first heard that they wanted to get away from this in the Democratic convention because they were concerned about protests, perhaps, around Gaza. But this has become snowballed into something. And then they said Ohio needed this approval before they could what? And now what’s happened?

JOHN NICHOLS: You’re summing it up well, because what you just said sounded a little confusing, and not because of you, but it’s because it is confusing. And in a sense, an argument can be made that some of the Democratic power brokers have decided to sort of create a confusion — right? — to create a circumstance where people are like, “Oh, this sounds kind of messy. Maybe we ought to just lock it in before the convention, get it all done.”

And the initial argument they had was that the state of Ohio had an early deadline and that you had the meet that deadline — it was before the convention — to get your candidate on the ballot. Right? So that’s a big deal. I mean, that’s important. You don’t want to not be on the ballot in Ohio — except that Ohio very clearly said, “No, we’ll give you a waiver ’til September 1.” So, everybody who’s serious about this says, “That’s off the table. That’s not a problem.”

So, then, they — you know, after that was done, it should have been off, right? We should have said, “OK, go to the convention. Do it normal.” No, instead, they keep agitating, and they sometimes keep bringing up the Ohio thing, you know, saying, “Oh, well, we don’t know. We don’t know if we can trust the Ohioans” — right? — or something like that.

End result is that what we know is right now DNC folks, as well as Democratic Party, you know, folks associated with the Biden campaign, appear to be going ahead with an effort to get the DNC to set a so-called virtual roll call date. That would be sometime perhaps next week. And you would then have a situation where Biden and, presumably, Harris are renominated.

So, by the time you got to the convention, the main point of the convention — now, I know conventions are now theater and lots of speeches and blah, blah, blah. But at a fundamental level, the main point of the convention is a nominating process. You choose someone to run for president, someone to run for vice president. You pick — you establish a platform for them to run on.

If you take all of that energy out of it a month before, two things happen. Number one, you potentially silence the efforts to question whether Joe Biden should be the nominee. That’s a serious issue, because it’s much discussed. The polling is very concerning to many Democrats. But you also do something else. You basically create a format, a template for the convention where there is no dialogue, where there is no debate, where those 35 or more delegates who were elected uncommitted to raise the issue of Gaza aren’t put in a position where they can raise it, where the platform isn’t debated.

And I will tell you something, Amy. I am a historian of Democratic Party. I wrote a book about it. And the Democratic Party benefits by exciting and engaged conventions. It doesn’t harm the Democratic Party. It won’t even harm Joe Biden. If it’s an engaged and exciting convention, he comes out of it well. What will harm the Democratic Party is if they so dumb down, so diminish this convention, that when people get to Chicago, it’s sort of, you know, everything’s been done but some speeches.

AMY GOODMAN: So, when it comes to the Democratic National Convention, you have President Biden saying what during his NATO press conference? “Delegates can vote their conscience.” What does that mean?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, depending on whether we believe it, you know — and I’m not questioning Joe Biden per se, but it is a relatively formal step to release your delegates — right? — to say, “Well, you can vote for who you want.” Now, it seemed, in some people’s interpretation, that that’s what he was saying. I’d like to see a little more backup on that before it actually happened.

But, essentially, that’s what Nikki Haley did. Nikki Haley said that her delegates at this Republican convention were released, they could vote for who they wanted. They voted primarily for Donald Trump.

But the challenge on this at the Democratic convention works like this. Most of Biden’s delegates would probably vote for him, no matter what. There’s a great loyalty to Biden. So, he’d probably get a substantial portion of that vote. But some of them might organize an effort to say, “Hey, we’re concerned.”

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, that is growing at this point.

JOHN NICHOLS: That’s right. And so, if indeed they were released, I think you would see the prospect of a substantial vote for someone else, for an alternative. And again, if you think this is unprecedented, it’s not. In 1948, when Harry Truman was seeking his first term as president — he had taken over from Franklin Roosevelt — he was very unpopular. His polls were terrible.

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

JOHN NICHOLS: The party was divided. They had a very intense convention. They actually put a civil rights plank in. And lo and behold, he won. The intensity actually helped Truman win. It didn’t hurt him.

AMY GOODMAN: John Nichols, The Nation's national affairs correspondent. We'll link to his new article, “If Democratic Leaders Suck the Life Out of Their 2024 Convention, They Will Damage Party Prospects in November.”

That does it for our expanded two-hour broadcast each day from the Republican National Convention.

We are accepting applications for a director of development to lead our fundraising efforts. Check it out at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.