The latest CBS News poll, conducted March 30-April 1, has Kerry beating Bush by 5 points among RVs. That’s consistent with the Los Angeles Times data I discussed yesterday.
There’s also new and strong evidence of Bush’s eroding credibility and the public’s declining confidence in his handling of the war on terror. Check it out.
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.
Try this site also. Good, intelligent reading.
http://gadflyer.com/
Dare I cite “nattering nabobs of negativism”?
To echo something RT said earlier, Dems’ pessimism and self-defeating psychology can be their own worst political enemy.
I live in liberal Seattle, and I’m amazed here how many people in one breath champion Kucinich / Nader / Sharpton, but then sigh that Bush will win anyway so they won’t even vote. They think that the GOP machine is unstoppable and grant it near-supernatural powers.
I often direct these people to DR to give them some positive signs and motivation!
Please give it some space, Space! Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.
Kerry = positive, Bush = negative.
Focus, focus, focus. Don’t fall into their false numbers game. The polls are useless in telling the real story. Polls are designed to brainwash the masses and are easily manipulated to do just that. The votes will rule. Think positive and talk positive about a future with President Kerry, show everyone the right way.
Save the negative for the liars cowboy club clan. oops.
Donkey Rising is engaging in nothing less than willfull ignorance. The CBS poll contains far more bad news than good. Among the disturbing numbers:
1. Kerry TRAILS Bush in battleground states.
2. Nearly twice as many people think Bush says what he believes than think Kerry does despite the fact that Bush has been lying to them for 3 years.
3. More people still think Bush will protect the U.S. from a terrorist attack.
4. More people think Kerry has been running a mostly negative campaign.
Yes, the numbers are trending away from Bush. But still, they should be much more favorable to Kerry.
How’s this for a play on their own words. Yes they are secretive evil doers who lie and try to hide what they are up to.
Someone said the other day that Nixon would be a tremendous improvement over this president. How sad of a state of affairs America has dropped to because of the Supreme Court’s installation of this person to run our country. Fortunately real American’s will have the last word come November. You know I used to think I hated Nixon and Reagan, just goes to show you how a new reality can alter what you think you knew ( I still hate them but now I have been shown that hatred has multiple levels).
Sorry just venting.
More good news in California where the latest poll has Bush at 38% approval rate to Kerry at about 50%. Bush never had a chance in California anyway, but the numbers have shown a tremendous downward slide for Bush in the last week or two.
Maxcat, They are a bunch of liars, but if I had to choose one word to describe this administration it would be “secretive”. They put Nixon to shame. John Dean’s book makes that clear.
Hey let’s start using the “L” word applied to this administration. All of them and their kind are always so fond of throwing that at the progressives like it means something dirty and bad. Well now it does but only when applied to them. That’s right, the “L” word as in LIARS.
Goodbye Mr. Bush.
Good News today. In addition to the Pew Report poll indicating the overall approval trend continues downward — now 43% down 5 points from March, Minnesota apparently went Kerry nuts over the last month. The previous poll had a 2 point spread, but today’s Star-Tribune poll puts Bush at 38 and Kerry at 50. A mite of progress. I was hoping Ruy was back, I am looking forward to his take on the Pew.
Prediction: Israel has the green light to assassinate Arafat. If there’s a suicied bombing in Israel that kills more than a few people, Arafat is gone.
My fear is that the Administration is rapidly reaching a point where they are willing to take a gamble on sheer global chaos to win.
Am I paranoid??
John Kerry will win in November by a considerable margin. Bush has betrayed his own parties agenda, betrayed democracy, and betrayed all good Americans. No amount of semantics will erase what Bush has led this country into. Nothing will wash the blood of our soldiers from his coat tails. All of America will speak and Bush will be silenced.
Joe, Kerry comes across to me as someone who–like Bill Clinton, and when he has the time to do so–prefers to be able to collect factual information and differing views and mull it over before making especially important decisions. To that I say “Hurray!! I miss that.” I agree with that part of what you said.
He does not come across to me as someone who makes decisions with a lack of self assurance, though. I think that’s what the Republicans want the public to believe. But I don’t have that perception of him at all. He comes across to me as generally quite sure-footed, in fact.
What really has to be done is a bit more organizing on the ground. Someone put up a dairy-entry on Kos about the lack of an organization in Ohio. There’s the same weakness here in Illinois.
This has got to change — rapidamente
Grush, it’s very tough to disengage your own feelings, your fear, your hope, from what is really going on out there in 50 different media markets – especially when you’re in one of the markets that is not in a target state.
Plus, the media saturation of NY leads people to buy into the “who’s up, who’s down’ mentality. If one candidate gets more press one week, it feels like they had a better week. Well, if that happens 6 weeks in a row, there’s a shift. But 1, 2, or even 3 weeks are too small of a time frame, unless we’re in October.
Sara: I too live in a swing state but in a very Republican area, West Michigan. Consequently, Kerry isn’t making any cable buys here to speak of. I suspect that the ad buys are heavier in the Detroit metro region.
I also suspect Kerry is in the process of developing a more centrist message and firming up campaign strategy. It will be a slow process for Kerry in that he doesn’t appear to be a person who makes decisions quickly or with a great deal of self assurance.
I hope he speaks out soon though on the need to finance our Iraq operations with a tax cut roll back for those higher income people. It would (1) help explain his vote on the $87 billion, (2) remind voters that we went there for no good reasons and(3) spread the sarifices of the war more equitably, something voters can identify with.
Sara,
That’s great, and encouraging. I live in New York, so the general din of life drowns out such things. Maybe Warren Buffet does have it right investing from Omaha.
Plus, I make it a point to listen to and read the enemy: Hannity, New York post, etc (plus, Page Six beats anything the Times has). So I have trouble separating signal from noise.
Still, after the Clarke testimony, Rice’s ridiculous waverings and the increasingly anarchy in Iraq, Bush should be down by 20 points.
It is simply not in Kerry’s interests to engage in the kind of tit for tat advertising war Bush undertook when he went up with his ads a few weeks ago.
Kerry needed the rest, and his primary centered staff needed to be re-organized, built out, and re-focused on tasks for the long haul. It is to Kerry’s advantage to be off the hot trail while this is done. Moreover, some other matters, such as the 911 commission were scheduled, and the better part of valor was to get out of the way and let them happen on their own., Kerry needed to raise big time money, and he is doing so effectively.
From where I sit in a battleground state, I see lots of advertising — Kerry’s stuff plus a number of good 527 efforts. I see lots of party planning meetings being announced, I see campaign staff being recruited and appointed to camapign jobs, I see announcements that surrogates are visiting town and making appearances. I would much prefer to see good organization and the finances to sustain it through to November than I would witness a hot altercation now about an issue that could easily be moot come November.
Not a very scientific or quantifiable observation here, but does anyone else sense the momentum slipping away from the Dems?
I feel as though Kerry is invisible… and that the major media is covering the candidates in proportion to their advertising spend.
Images of Bush crosscut with Iraq carnage, I’m afraid, will help him. “The world is a terrifying mess, don’t take any chances right now.” (Of course, the world is aflame because Bush decided to throw gasoline on the fire after 9/11).
One key dynamic is that Kerry really CAN’T affirmatively define himself. Bush’s deficit makes any spending on social programs impossible, cultural issues are a minefield, and there is general ‘consensus’ among the ‘elites’ on current foreign ‘policy.’
I’m concerned.