Here’s a couple of interesting results from the Newsweek poll I discussed yesterday. Only 30 percent say the US military action in Iraq has decreased the risk that large numbers of Americans will be killed or injured in a future terrorist attack. That compares to 63 percent who say either the risk has increased (36 percent) or hasn’t changed at all (27 percent).
Yet the same poll finds Bush favored over Kerry (53 percent to 38 percent) on handling the situation in Iraq.
Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 19: Will Chaos of Chicago ’68 Return This Year?
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.
Gaza isn’t Vietnam.
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.
Political conventions are different today.
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.
Brandon Johnson isn’t Richard Daley.
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 whole world (probably) won’t be watching.
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.
I’m not sure the aim of simply “eroding” Bush’s support on Iraq is a responsible position. Shouldn’t the facts be mroe important. On that question of facts, I will cop to being one of these “nitwits” who do believe in an Iraqi connection to 911. What about Salman Pak? Google that and see what you find. What about the civil verdict that held Iraq liable for 911 damages? Was that a vapor? What about the Iraqi connections to WTC1, which are hardly in dispute to Richard Clarke, to name one. Maybe when the Democrats honestly engage the debate, their stock on national securty issues will rise.
It’s all about “the devil you know.” If Kerry can move past the stigma of “the devil you don’t know,” he’s in. As you have pointed out numerous times, Bush’s support is melting like lake ice on a spring day. A little more heat and, voila’!
Right now, these polls indicate that people will still go with the devil they know over someone they don’t. John Kerry needs to aggressively define himself, before George Bush does that for him.
Did Kerry’s entire campaign decide to go skiing with him in Idaho? The lack of any discernable response to the recent Bush onslaught sure makes one think so.
Hopefully, that’s going to be a one-time anomaly.
Never underestimate the soft bigotry of low expectations coming from the nitwits for W.
A followup thought: Hillary Clinton has quietly given some excellent, constructive speeches on foreign policy in the last few months. She has come off as serious and substantive, and not a cheapshot artist.
The major speech Kerry needs to give in the next day or two should be along the same lines. If he does so in a constructive tone he’ll help establish himself as commanding and reassuring among some of the persuadables who are still preferring Bush on Iraq and national security. He’ll also entitle himself to a few tastefully worded whacks at the Administration in so doing.
Surrogates and pundits will take the harder shots in case the implications of Kerry’s speech aren’t crystal clear to everyone.
Cheney told Limbaugh yesterday that Clarke was out of the loop on anti-terrorism policy. Yet Rice ceded leadership of the response to the crisis on 9/11 to Clarke. If Cheney was being truthful wouldn’t Rice’s decision be a criminally reckless thing to do?
I don’t know if Kerry has offered much of substance about what he would do to combat terrorism or in Iraq but I agree that if he has done so he is not being heard clearly.
He needs to be heard clearly soon. There aren’t going to be lots more Richard Clarkes coming down the pike handing him the national security issue on a silver platter. Kerry I believe is very much up to offering the country the reassurance that he would be a far steadier and more trustworthy Commander in Chief. He needs to step up–now–and do it.
It’s not at all surprising that the public trusts Bush more than Kerry on Iraq. Kerry hasn’t told the American public how he would deal with Iraq. He hasn’t even begun to present himself as the “steady reassuring presence” that he needs to be on Iraq, the military, and terrorism.
When it’s a matter of life and death, the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.
To win this coming election we absolutely have to see “Trust in Bush on Terrorism, etc.) driven down in the polls. I think this is basic — how to do it is the question.
One contradiction jumps out at me after a day of reading and watching the post Clarke commentary, and that is the matter of whether Iraq is part of “war on terrorism” or is it distinct? Apparently at least 50% still hang with the belief in a strong link.
So how to break this link? Clarke offers us the story of Bush trying to bully him on 9/12 into providing intelligence that supports the belief in a link. They tried to dismiss that bullying — but there were witnesses and they had to back down a mite.
But Bully the intelligence gatherers and analyists became the principle mode of operation come Iraq time. Even to the extent of destroying operations and trying to smear Plame and Wilson, because they were in the way of the bully.
Something tells me this is the story that just might work with that 50% who still “Trust” on Nat Security and War on Terrorism matters. The image of Bush as Bully when faced with evidence that disagrees with his pre-determined world view might just knock down some of these approval points.
What’s to wonder about regarding the fact that Bush’s numbers on national security are better than Kerry’s?
The last two Democratic presidents, Carter and Clinton, were loath to use force or even talk about the use of force with respect to the Soviet Union or terrorism. Not surprisingly, the American people have tilted towards the GOP on national security because Republican presidents were not finicky about the use of force or calling for more armaments on a continuous basis.
If we are going to be engaged in a long twilight struggle against the terrorism of radical Islam, and it would appear that we are for the foreseeable future, then the democratic party and its standard bearers are going to have to use a different kind of language and style to persuade the American people that they are up to the job of keeping everyone safe.
BushI ran against Dukakis while the Cold War was still in its last stages. We know the outcome. Bill Clinton ran against BushI at the end of the Cold War and during a weak economy. We know what happened there. Now we have BushII running against Kerry during a weak economy and a nasty struggle against a shadowy terror network.
If Kerry expects to win he’s got to show first that he has the spine to tear into Bush on his national security failures and present, with the help of surrogates, a credible plan of action against terrorism. One more week like the last one and Kerry will be toast.