Democratic National Convention

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 1852 national convention. The primary goal of the Democratic National Convention is to nominate and confirm a candidate for president and vice president, adopt a comprehensive party platform and unify the party.

Delegates from all fifty U.S. states and from American dependencies and territories such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands attend the convention and cast their votes to choose the Party's presidential candidate. Like the Republican National Convention, the Democratic National Convention marks the formal end of the primary election period and the start of the general election season.

Candidate nomination

The party's presidential nominee is chosen in a series of individual state caucuses and primary elections. Superdelegates, delegates whose votes are not bound to the outcome of a state's caucus or primary, may also influence the nomination. Due to the scheduling of caucuses and primary elections early in the election year, the party's presidential nominee is usually known months before the Democratic National Convention.

2004 Democratic National Convention

The 2004 Democratic National Convention convened from July 26 to 29, 2004 at the FleetCenter (now the TD Garden) in Boston, Massachusetts, and nominated Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts for President and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina for Vice President, respectively, in the 2004 presidential election.

The 2004 Democratic National Convention included the featured keynote speech of Barack Obama, then a candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, who would later go on to become the 44th President of the United States in 2009. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson served as chairman of the convention, while former presidential advisor to Bill Clinton, Lottie Shackelford, served as vice chairwoman.

The 2004 Democratic National Convention marked the formal end of the active primary election season, although all meaningful primary elections had finished months earlier. After the convention, John Kerry and John Edwards were defeated by the incumbent George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the general election.

1960 Democratic National Convention

The 1960 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles, California, on July 11–July 15, 1960. It nominated Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts for President and Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas for Vice President.

In the general election, the Kennedy–Johnson ticket won an electoral college victory and a narrow popular vote plurality (slightly over 110,000 nationally) over the Republican candidates Vice President Richard M. Nixon and UN Ambassador Henry C. Lodge II.

Prologue

The major candidates for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination were Kennedy, Governor Pat Brown of California, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, and Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. Several other candidates sought support in their home state or region as "favorite son" candidates without any realistic chance of winning the nomination. Symington, Stevenson, and Johnson all declined to campaign in the presidential primaries. While this reduced their potential delegate count going into the Democratic National Convention, each of these three candidates hoped that the other leading contenders would stumble in the primaries, thus causing the convention's delegates to choose him as a "compromise" candidate acceptable to all factions of the party.