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.
Look around – who doesn’t have jobs? They are everywhere – if you are willing to work. I was out of the workforce for 3 years staying home with my kids and then my husband lost his job. We used this as an incentive to start a business – so he stayed home with the kids while the business is getting started and I went back to work. It took me 4 weeks to find a job. I looked hard and found one, maybe not my dream job, but it’s a opportunity to get back into the business world. I am paying the bills, my husband is starting a good business – that is bringing in money already and I’m still getting phone calls about work – and with the increase in Manufacturing I expect to find a better paying job by the end of the summer. Of course, my husband is counted as unemployed, but he’s contributing to the economy in a very important and undermeasured way – as a small business owner. Get used to it, as the Summer approaches, more stories like ours will come out and the optimism of the American Dream will sound out the pessimism of the Kerry frown!!!!!!
The CEO cited hit the nail on the head as to why jobs aren’t being created: there is no confidence in this recovery. If business picks up, they will do anything but hire, lest they get hung with new employees in another downturn. Business knows the economy is running on caffeine, and the growth is not sustainable. Although Bush can’t be really blamed for the loss of jobs, he can certainly be blamed for the conditions under which nobody wants to hire.
Joe Zainea’s comments are on target. Kerry ought to commend the president for FINALLY taking the capture of Osama seriously, an urgent task sidelined by the invasion of Iraq. As with the Dept. of Homeland Security, the president once again drags his feet on national security.
Kerry should use Bush’s opposition to stem cell research as a jobs issue. The next wave of technology jobs will be in genetics/biotech. We need to encourage scientific research in this area, not let it go to other countries like the Bush admin has.
I think Kerry has legitimate economics on his side — I would appreciate more from the professor from Texas. Trade and trade agreements are good for America, but they are only good for all Americans if they include provisions to help displaced workers. You sell free trade by redistributing the increased risk that workers take on in a free trade environment.
The cost of health care for employees as an inhibitor to hiring is a good story that is, I think sellable to voters. It is more of a relative cost than the story gets across, but a strong message aimed at ameliorating the health care costs of businesses might be doubly advantageous. Soon, non-health care business leaders will start getting serious about gettiing out of the health care business, and it would be nice to align with them.
In support of Kerry’s positions we only need to point out the actuary who was threatened with firing if he gave honest answers to Congress over the Prescription bill. His findings were that the “privatisation” aspects of the bill would increase the cost for those that wanted to stay in traditional Medicare- see http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003481.html for more
To do what Ruy suggests would certainly require increased government spending and tax increases, not decreases. To avoid, as much as possible, these falling on middle-class people, things like shutting down the offshore tax havens will have to be contemplated. Hence, the “Benedict Arnold” rhetoric still has a role. These tax-dodgers need to be vilified. They’re part of the problem.
Also, someone will have to take on the argument that says every contract must go to the low-cost bidder, such as India today for programming work. The government can adopt a jobs-for-Americans-first stance, but they’d better be prepared from some Wall Street flak if they do.
Sorry, but “quieting down the Benedict Arnold rhetoric” is a recipe for surrender to Wall Street.
Joe,
Oh, you meant Barney Frank. Whoops…
Joe,
On the contrary, my blueprint leaves all possible heavylifting to the private sector — I’m a CLLCS entrepreneur, after all — and merely calls for an enlightened version of the manfacturing czar that the Bush administration has pledged to appoint.
So nothing impolitic about the approach…
Best,
Frank
Ruy, good for you, for calling attention to this issue.The problem will not be solved as it was beginning in 1993, by a deficit-reduction plan. Keep writing about it. Jamie
For an interesting take on the jobs front and why they’re not being produced in this recovery, read David Broder’s column in this morning’s Washington Post. He gives a lot of credit to Barney Frank (Dem. MA) for his candor on the structural changes in the economy which does not augur well for job increases.
Frank sees a much bigger role for government to cope with the problem and his views are not easily adopted by Democratic candidates without running the risk of catching a lot of adverse blowback from conservatives.
If that excerpt is true, nothing but protectionism or some sort of fair trade will work. Even if the federal government pays for the benefits, new jobs will still go overseas.
You mean campaign on policy that will actually address the problem — rather than being a demogogue!?
Well, duh! Exactly !!!
Joe-
I think Kerry can give a very succint and appropriate comment to the hunt for Osama- “It’s about damn time. What took you so long?” Bush answering that leads to the morass of Iraq.
Agree — Kerry needs to CLEARLY lay out his differences on National Security with the Bush WH, and drive his points in over and over again. He doesn’t have a long time to work on this — otherwise Bush will nit pick him to death with one old vote after another, and make it impossible for him to define himself as competent on Foreign Policy, National Security, Homeland Security — and how these all integrate with each other.
And without question, he should express his great confidence in the US forces now in Afghanistan, that if Bin Laden is there to be found, they will do their upmost to find him. High Hopes in the troops, sympathy with their tasks in rugged country, but at the same time Kerry has said in the past we could have gotten him at Tora Bora, but we were shy about using the 10th Mountain Division and Marines, and instead hired locals, who took money from both sides, and led him to Pakistan to safe haven. Kerry should remind — and hope for a better outcome this time.
Homeland Security — I think that covers Trains that have not gotten much attention. Kerry ought to be doing some rasberry on this one. Likewise busses, school busses, Intercity Busses. I heard one Republican say this week that security is difficult on subways because they are for the Public. If there were someway to deconstruct the underlying attitude (and class bias) here, Kerry should run with it.
What I fear is that Kerry has not pulled together his foreign policy – Security team and given them their marching orders for papers and speeches.
Following Ruy’s advice of yesterday, I read Ron Brownstein’s LAT article on jobs and came away more impressed with the points made in that article about how national security concerns could trump even a solid Kerry strategy on adding jobs. I said it before here and I’ll say it again. Events between now and election day will move America’s voters to one candidate or another.
Kerry needs to say something significant now regarding a successful effort in finding Osama bin Laden. To look presidential, he can’t be seen as being surprised at that event; especially since Rumsfeld has very publicly gone to a full court press on this effort. Kerry needs to be on the rightside ahead of time if bin Laden is captured or killed in the next few weeks. If the effort fails, Bush can catch it from Kerry and others.
If Kerry and his people think that jobs and the economy will be determinative in this election because the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe and the Americas will remain static between now and November, he will be taking a terrible risk.
He must, very soon, begin to say the kinds of things regarding national securuty that can immunize him against the “I told you so” he and the voters will hear from the Bush campaign; no matter if the event is awful (as Madrid) or triumphant (success in Afghanistan).