Victor Couto

Mar 15, 2024 | retroreport.org | Matthew Spolar |Brian Kamerzel |Victor Couto |Sianne Garlick

The process of political conventions can prove baffling, as the same qualities that make one candidate a loser at one convention, can make him or her a big winner at the next. In 1976, conservative Republicans rebelled against the moderate in the White House – President Gerald R. Ford – and arrived in Kansas City loudly backing Ronald Reagan.

Mar 14, 2024 | retroreport.org | Matthew Spolar |Victor Couto |Amy Lee Hochman |Sandra McDaniel

Political conventions are designed to choose presidential candidates, but underneath all the noise they can reveal profound truths about America. That was the case at the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York City, where the party split. New York Governor Alfred E. Smith led a faction of urban Democrats who supported a vision of a nation built on manufacturing, immigrants who provided cheap labor, and sprawling urban centers full of opportunity.

Mar 13, 2024 | retroreport.org | Matthew Spolar |Brian Kamerzel |Victor Couto |Sandra McDaniel

Introduction This five-minute video introduces students to the “civil war” between the Republican Party’s moderates and conservatives that led to one of the most raucous conventions in American political history. After disciplined and combative conservative forces successfully nominated Senator Barry Goldwater, the party’s moderates sabotaged their own nominee at the convention, virtually ensuring President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in November.

Mar 12, 2024 | retroreport.org | Matthew Spolar |Brian Kamerzel |Victor Couto

Presidential nominating conventions are so much a part of today’s political landscape, it’s hard to believe they resulted from a 19th Century populist movement obsessed with conspiracy. The Anti-Masonic Party rose in the late 1820s to oppose what it believed to be the control of the American political process by the Freemasons, a secret fraternal organization that numbered among its members many prominent politicians and statesmen, including George Washington.

Mar 9, 2024 | retroreport.org | Matthew Spolar |Brian Kamerzel |Victor Couto

There hasn’t been a contested national convention after the first ballot since 1952, so the need to provide drama often falls on the keynote speaker to deliver a message that isn’t forgotten when the clapping stops. The standout keynote speaker of the last 20 years was a “young guy out of Chicago” named Barack Obama who spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. At the time, Obama was a two-term state senator from Illinois, running for a U.S. Senate seat.