This was, in large part, due to the fact that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Charles Manatt, was a Californian,[5][8] and heavily supported San Francisco's bid.

[7] Then-California State Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Pelosi was another strong booster of San Francisco's bid.

[5] Additionally considered positives for San Francisco's prospects of hosting the convention was that California was the state with the most votes in the Electoral College, and it had a female mayor (Dianne Feinstein).

[4] Washington, D.C.'s bid was the city's first attempt to receive the hosting rights to a major party nominating convention.

[5] The Democrats' choice of San Francisco, paired with the Republican Party's earlier selection of Dallas, Texas for their 1984 convention, meant that, for the second time ever (after only the 1928 United States presidential election), both the Democratic and Republican parties hosted their nominating conventions in cities west of the Mississippi River.

[5] The convention was the first to utilize the rule changes recommended by the Hunt Commission in response to the protracted 1980 Democratic Party presidential primaries between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, including the use of superdelegates.

Jackson's speech referred to the nation as a "quilt" with places for "[t]he white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the business person, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled".

His number of pledged delegates (those bound to him and awarded through primaries) alone did not give him enough of a lead to win the nomination without superdelegate support.

She first considered voting for him after seeing him speak at the 1983 Maine Democratic state convention and decided to support him after his speech at the DNC.

[18] For Vice President of the United States, Mondale had a pick between Mayor Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco (future five-term United States Senator from California) and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro of New York; he chose Congresswoman Ferraro to be his vice presidential running mate, which established her as the first woman to be nominated for Vice President of the United States from a major American political party.

Until 2024, this was the most recent time that neither a sitting nor former United States Senator was nominated for vice president by the Democratic Party.