No Balloons!

 

It’s so fun.  Loud music, confetti and yes, balloons! The candidate and their running mate along with their families clap and point to the party faithful for a solid ten minutes with the spirit of a highs school pep assembly right before the big game.  Truly a marvel in American politics, but it is not all fun.Maybe Democrats were worried about "The Balloon Drop Curse".

No one can forget it when CNN microphones captured the convention floor director cursing his technical staff to release more balloons as John Kerry accepted his party’s nomination in Boston in 2004.  In all honesty the majority of balloons did find their way to intended location, but the director’s verbal displeasure with the timing and it being broadcasted to the entire nation led this incident to be categorized as a “Balloon Drop Curse”.  Democratic officials began to cringe as they remembered 1980 in New York City, when after Jimmy Carter accepted the party’s nomination, balloons tricked down one by one from the ceiling of Madison Square Garden.

What curse? It’s only balloons. No, it’s bigger then that.  Both campaigns were ahead in the polls at the time, albeit by a small margin and both would go on to lose the November election.  It shows poor organization of the convention organizers who were hand picked by the party causing a ripple effect that reflects on the candidates themselves.  The party has only once every four years to display itself to a national audience and if it can’t have a net attached to the ceiling come lose allowing inflated latex to shower the arena floor, what can it do?

Yesterday it was announced that the convention speech was being moved indoors due to weather concerns, unlike in 2008 when it was held outdoors and open to the public, not just convention attendees.  T  After the 2004 incident referring to such an occurrence as a curse became popularized and every convention since then the television networks to focus on the possibility of another mishap.  The same years as the Boston flap, George W. Bush’s acceptance speech was infiltrated by hecklers, but nobody remembers that.  We remember the balloons.