A lot of people who weren’t alive to witness the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago are wondering if it’s legendary chaos. I evaluated that possibility at New York:
When the Democratic National Committee chose Chicago as the site of the party’s 2024 national convention a year ago, no one knew incumbent presidential nominee Joe Biden would become the target of major antiwar demonstrations. The fateful events of October 7 were nearly six months away, and Biden had yet to formally announce his candidacy for reelection. So there was no reason to anticipate comparisons to the riotous 1968 Democratic Convention, when images of police clashing with anti–Vietnam War protesters in the Windy City were broadcast into millions of homes. Indeed, a year ago, a more likely analog to 2024 might have been the last Democratic convention in Chicago in 1996; that event was an upbeat vehicle for Bill Clinton’s successful reelection campaign.
Instead, thanks to intense controversy over Israel’s lethal operations in Gaza and widespread global protests aimed partly at Israel’s allies and sponsors in Washington, plans are well underway for demonstrations in Chicago during the August 19 to 22 confab. Organizers say they expect as many as 30,000 protesters to gather outside Chicago’s United Center during the convention. As in the past, a key issue is how close the protests get to the actual convention. Obviously, demonstrators want delegates to hear their voices and the media to amplify their message. And police, Chicago officials, and Democratic Party leaders want protests to occur as far away from the convention as possible. How well these divergent interests are met will determine whether there is anything like the kind of clashes that dominated Chicago ’68.
There are, however, some big differences in the context surrounding the two conventions. Here’s why the odds of a 2024 convention showdown rivaling 1968 are actually fairly low.
Horrific as the ongoing events in Gaza undoubtedly are, and with all due consideration of the U.S. role in backing and supplying Israel now and in the past, the Vietnam War was a more viscerally immediate crisis for both the protesters who descended on Chicago that summer and the Americans watching the spectacle on TV. There were over a half-million American troops deployed in Vietnam in 1968, and nearly 300,000 young men were drafted into the Army and Marines that year. Many of the protesters at the convention were protesting their own or family members’ future personal involvement in the war, or an escape overseas beyond the Selective Service System’s reach (an estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada during the Vietnam War, and how to deal with them upon repatriation became a major political issue for years).
Even from a purely humanitarian and altruistic point of view, Vietnamese military and civilian casualties ran into the millions during the period of U.S. involvement. It wasn’t common to call what was happening “genocide,” but there’s no question the images emanating from the war (which spilled over catastrophically into Laos and especially Cambodia) were deeply disturbing to the consciences of vast numbers of Americans.
Perhaps a better analogy for the Gaza protests than those of the Vietnam era might be the extensive protests during the late 1970s and 1980s over apartheid in South Africa (a regime that enjoyed explicit and implicit backing from multiple U.S. administrations) and in favor of a freeze in development and deployment of nuclear weapons. These were significant protest movements, but still paled next to the organized opposition to the Vietnam War.
One reason the 1968 Chicago protests created such an indelible image is that the conflict outside on the streets was reflected in conflict inside the convention venue. For one thing, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey had not quelled formal opposition to his selection when the convention opened. He never entered or won a single primary. One opponent who did, Eugene McCarthy, was still battling for the nomination in Chicago. Another, Robert F. Kennedy, had been assassinated two months earlier (1972 presidential nominee George McGovern was the caretaker for Kennedy delegates at the 1968 convention). There was a highly emotional platform fight over Vietnam policy during the convention itself; when a “peace plank” was defeated, New York delegates led protesters singing “We Shall Overcome.” Once violence broke out on the streets, it did not pass notice among the delegates, some of whom had been attacked by police trying to enter the hall. At one point, police actually accosted and removed a TV reporter from the convention for some alleged breach in decorum.
By contrast, no matter what is going on outside the United Center, the 2024 Democratic convention is going to be totally wired for Joe Biden, with nearly all the delegates attending pledged to him and chosen by his campaign. Even aside from the lack of formal opposition to Biden, conventions since 1968 have become progressively less spontaneous and more controlled by the nominee and the party that nominee directs (indeed, the chaos in Chicago in 1968 encouraged that trend, along with near-universal use of primaries to award delegates, making conventions vastly less deliberative). While there may be some internal conflict on the platform language related to Gaza, it will very definitely be resolved long before the convention and far away from cameras.
Another significant difference between then and now is that convention delegates and Democratic elected officials generally will enter the convention acutely concerned about giving aid and comfort to the Republican nominee, the much-hated, much-feared Donald Trump. Yes, many Democrats hated and feared Richard Nixon in 1968, but Democrats were just separated by four years from a massive presidential landslide and mostly did not reckon how much Nixon would be able to straddle the Vietnam issue and benefit from Democratic divisions. That’s unlikely to be the case in August of 2024.
Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley was a major figure in the 1968 explosion in his city. He championed and defended his police department’s confrontational tactics during the convention. At one point, when Senator Abraham Ribicoff referred from the podium to “gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago,” Daley leaped up and shouted at him with cameras trained on his furious face as he clearly repeated an obscene and antisemitic response to the Jewish politician from Connecticut. Beyond his conduct on that occasion, “Boss” Daley was the epitome of the old-school Irish American machine politician and from a different planet culturally than the protesters at the convention.
Current Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, who was born the year of Daley’s death, is a Black progressive and labor activist who is still fresh from his narrow 2023 mayoral runoff victory over the candidate backed by both the Democratic Establishment and police unions. While he is surely wary of the damage anti-Israel and anti-Biden protests can do to the city’s image if they turn violent, Johnson is not without ties to protesters. He broke a tie in the Chicago City Council to ensure passage of a Gaza cease-fire resolution earlier this year. His negotiating skills will be tested by the maneuvering already underway with protest groups and the Democratic Party, but he’s not going to be the sort of implacable foe the 1968 protesters encountered.
The 1968 Democratic convention was from a bygone era of gavel-to-gavel coverage by the three broadcast-television networks that then dominated the media landscape and the living rooms of the country. When they were being bludgeoned by the Chicago police, protesters began chanting, “The whole world is watching,” which wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Today’s media coverage of major-party political conventions is extremely limited and (like coverage of other events) fragmented. If violence breaks out this time in Chicago, it will get a lot of attention, albeit much of it bent to the optics of the various media outlets covering it. But the sense in 1968 that the whole nation was watching in horror as an unprecedented event rolled out in real time will likely never be recovered.
Someone made a comment that Democrats should try to win over Hispanics, in say Colorado, rather than “Southerners” who once were Democrats.
I think the Democratic Party should be very careful about trying to “win over” Hispanics. Hispanics are, and probably will remain, a swing vote. The reason is that there is no monolithic Hispanic group.
Generally, Puerto Ricans vote Dem, Cubans Americans vote Rep., and Mexican Americans split.
And on issues such as immigration, large percentages of Hispanics vote against the stand taken by Democrats in general (pro-immigant rights?).
There are just no “Latino” issues to exploit. My personal view is that trying to win back the South will be easier than getting a core of loyal Latino voters in the West. No matter how hard we try to create this monolithic Hispanic group, the reality will always be that it does not exist. And how can you “win over” something that does not exist.
For example, I am an historian, and I know that generally Mexicans do not see themselves as one group of people; instead, they have regional identities. But somehow, incorrectly, we in politics somehow equate Latinos as a group with similar histories, as is true with African Americans who all have links to slavery, racism, and legal segregation.
Instead, and I think most people here seem to agree, winning the South, or at least winning back two or three states in the South makes more sense. Consequently, the issues needed to win in the South will make a candidate viable anywhere in the nation.
As I said in another post, many people in the South who vote Republican are transplants from elsewhere (including many Latinos!). A Democrat who can win these votes while keeping those of loyal Southern constituencies such as African Americans, workers, and just plain old Yellow Dogs will take the White House every time!
David Pye
The south is not a place to write off. Sure there are plenty of die hard republicans. There also are lots of people who are on to the lying and criminal actions that the republicans have been up to for years. Many women especially will want to remove the republicans from office. There are a lots of Democrats in these southern states that want to turn our states BLUE.
We Dems need to be fighting hard in the South.
What many people forget is that a major chunk of our African-American base vote resides in this region. If properly motivated can force the GOP to burn up resources fighting to hold Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Louisiana.
Consistent wins by Democrats in this region will jump start the process of peeps who are ROC’s (republicans of convenienece) to switch to the Democratic party
Texas is ripe for a return to its progressive roots after being mismanaged by Republicans since 1994. The Txea Democratic Party needs to be rebuilt in order to make that happen.
There are 50 states in this country and our party needs to be competitive in all regions, including the South.
Senator Mitch McConnell should be ripe for the picking if he keeps leading his fellow GOP off the cliff.
Just his support for the drug company’s proifts alone should do him in. Sen. Schumer should taget this turkey early and let the people of his state know who’s pocket McConnell is in. Women should be a prime go-to group to knock off with. Now if he recruits a female candidate, they could be making history as well.
This is an interesting argument. It does underscore the fact that we must nominate a candidate who can truly appeal to all of America. In my opinion, the only candidate we have that has a combination of the experience needed to be President, and the appeal needed to win in the northeast, west, AND the south is General Wes Clark. If/when he jumps in to the race it will change the dynamic. He also gives us the only option for a candidate who can take the national security issue completely away from anyone the GOP nominates. I honestly believe that Wes Clark gives us our most genuine chance for a landslide victory in November of 08′.
Dr. Abramowitz’s thesis would be much more powerful if it took place in a country with relatively static demographics. But that clearly is not the case in the USA in the 21st century.
Let’s all take a deep breath and remember that the power of “the socially traditionalist working class” is waning everywhere except in the South where it is waning more slowly.
To build a party that truly represents working Americans, we must focus on the increasingly critical Latino and Under 30 voters. And not even the ones who vote, but the ones who don’t.
We can convince a non-voting Hispanic in Colorado to vote Democratic a great deal easier than we can convince a Reagan Democrat(?) in Georgia to switch back to the Democratic Party.
Sure, we’d love to appeal to both, but I want to use our resources most effectively now and in the future. It’s like the effort it takes to seduce someone who knows you slightly is a great deal less than convincing an ex-girlfriend to take you back.
Schaller here. Let me begin by saying Alan and I are friends and colleagues, and he’s a great econometrician and somebody rightfully respected in our discipline. (We’re even working on a piece together right now on a different subject.) I know his post here is intended to offer some provocative ideas and a bit of data to back them up.
But I’m not sure he has much of a result here, and not merely because of the choice of the states or the quality of the correlate analyses. Rather, it’s a somewhat superficial result, a discussion of slopes when it is the intercepts that matter.
For the math-challenged, think of the following scenario: One group of people is tall, another group is short, and then for some reason or set of reasons (e.g., the introduction of fatty, drive-thru foods and growth of suburbs which reduce daily walking rates) both groups gain weight. (Actually, this is happening in America, which is quite sad.) The weight increases for the two groups will likely be positively correlated and statistically significant. Is the taller group now, somehow, the same height as the other group? Of course not. Taller people are, on average, heavier than shorter people; when both groups gain, the taller remains heavier and, obviously, taller.
So, yes, it may well be that in some states the partisan gains are significantly and positively related, and perhaps that means that Democratic messages are working equally everywhere. But I’m not so sure: Go look at the Clinton-Gore gains between 1992 and 1996, which are anything but uniformly 6.3% in every state, which was their national improvement. States like MA, NH, ME, RI and such gained more than 10%; elsewhere, in all but FL and LA among the former Confederate states Clinton-Gore improved by less than the national benchmark, including several states where Clinton and Gore only improved 2-3%.
Finally, a thought experiment: Imagine a scenario in which Democrats improve by 4 percent in 2008 over their 2004 performance in EVERY SINGLE state. How many states would flip from red to blue? Answer: Four non-southern states–OH, IA, NM and NV, for a total of 37 precious electors, enough for an electoral college majority. None of the southern states would move into the Democratic column, because Bush won all 11 by at least 5 percent.
Aha, so the slopes could be all the same–a perfect correlation of 1.000–and because the intercepts (starting points) vary so much, the Democratic nominee would still will not a single southern state.
I realize Alan’s point is to refute the idea that rates of improvement outside the South will be different than inside the South. That would be a good sign that voters respond equally, and everywhere, to themes and candidates. Given the demographic heterogeneity of states, this to me to be very unlikely.
Righting off the South is a very bad idea. With the large number of African American voters in the region, not appealing to the South will only serve to ignore one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies.
Moreover, the South is growing leaps and bounds as people from other regions move there. These people live in the suburbs that ring southern cities. The “dirty little secret” is that these people help keep the republican Party strong in the South. Without the infusion of new blood from the transplants contests in the South–particularly on the state and local levels–would be more competitive.
A national candidate can do well in the southern suburbs, will win the Presidency. Ignoring or running against the South will only leave to defeat.
And last, doing so will leave African Americans stranded and will send a message that the Democratic Party does not stand with its friends!
I have the highest respect for Dr. Abramowitz, but I am unconvinced by these data. It stands to reason that the better a candidate does in one state, the better he or she will do in another state. I would be wiling to bet that there are similar correlations between the vote margins in swing states and vote margins in the Northeast; however, despite this probable link, Republicans have effectively exploited an “anti-northeastern liberal values” sentiment in the past. These data are meaningless, in my opinion, without something to contrast with: correlations between states in the Northeast. If the vote margins in Northeastern states are less correlated with sthe vote margins in swing states than are the vote margins in southern states (what a mouthful!), then I will buy Dr. Abramowitz’s argument.
Democrats cannot afford to write off the South. Our party must appeal to socially traditionalist voters in order to build a long-term governing majority.
It is imperative that our party win back the socially traditionalist working class and these voters are by no means limited to the South. As Dr. Abromowitz points out, such voters are quite numerous in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.