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.
I couldn’t disagree more! I think both sides realize Nader’s influence in this election, especially the Republicans. In the words of Mike White, Director of the Oregon Family Council on why he was collecting signatures to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in Oregon”We aren’t bashful about doing it. We are a conservative, pro-family organization, and Bush is our guy on virtually every issue.” In the words of, Steve Wark, the Bush supporter largely responsible for getting Mr. Nader on the ballot in Nevada, when asked whether the addition of Mr. Nader to the ballot would help the President’s hopes of victory in Nevada, “I would hope so. I didn’t do it for my own health.” The truth is in an election as close as this one the votes Nader takes away will matter. That’s why the Republicans invest so much to get him on the ballot in every battleground state–literally. To see the facts on this Republican help go to http://www.thenaderfactor.com/press/072304/
To Mark Schmitt,
That’s an easy one.
There are probably between 1% and 3% of voters nationwide who would actually show up on election day and cast a vote for a Ralph Nader if he ran as the Green Party’s candidate. There are probably a similar number of people who will *say* they intend to show up on election day and cast a vote for a Ralph Nader (or a ham sandwich or whatever), rather than just admit they’re not going to vote — so there’s also a certain Nader component in what we might call the “noise floor” of the poll.
The important thing is the real number of people out there who will actually vote for Ralph Nader, while small, is greater than zero. And if you ask enough people to get a meaningful sample of a population, you should be able to pick that up. The other thing to remember, of course, is that in a poll with a margin of error of +/- 3%, all the numbers between 1 and 6 (inclusive) are effectively *the same number*.
Nader could make more waves by adopting a more libertarian attitude to taxation, one that follows with his other kinds of populism.
I am afraid I disagree.
The real issue here is not whether Nader runs or not.
The real issue is, how many potential voters on the left does Kerry risk alienating by attempting to capture the swing soft belly.
Even if Nader is not there, many of these alienated voters may just decide to not vote, or vote Green, or who knows, Libertarian, if anti-war is a big issue for them.
This Nader-paranoia is taking the forest for the trees.
So, why specifically are some potential Kerry voters on the left considering not voting for him?
They consider that Kerry provides no real alternative plan on:
– the war in Iraq
– the war on terror
– Israel and Palestine
– the role of the US in International development.
And what they consider a too limited alternative on:
– universal healthcare
– worker rights
– tax regime
– gay rights, and many more.
Whether that is true or not is not the point. If, stopping for a moment to ostracize them, you spend the time needed to just listen to potential Nader voters, that will be their perception.
It is time to stop blaming them, or worse – blackmailing them, and to cater to them in the same manner that Kerry tries to cater to the swing voter. It’s time for a bit of marketing…
Otherwise, and regardless of whether Nader will be there or not for them, they simply won’t vote Kerry.
I think the ‘hide in the compounds’ strategy will work pretty well and has been predictable for many months. Bush will not be hurt very much if Iraq descends into total chaos. This descent will barely merit mention in the news. There are 2 reasons for this:
1 – Most Americans don’t care about Iraq very much, so new about Iraqi deaths won’t sell papers.
2 – Chaos is dangerous (especially to Western reporters), so most reporters will stay out of the way.
RE: “put our troops into safe compounds out of harm’s way”
I don’t think that will work. Without US troops on the streets keeping the peace, the situation there could rapidly descend into complete chaos. Bush is between a rock and a hard place there, and there’s no easy way out.
I haven’t seen a serious analysis of Nader’s appeal, even from a poll-oriented site like this one. Again and again, I see comparative polls where Nader appears to steal from BOTH Kerry and Bush… But the truth is that the appearance of Nader brings out voters who would not be voting otherwise… Perot voters, Greens etc. Nader does not steal from Kerry. Every minute spent on squashing him is wasted. Why not try to steal NADER’s voters?
Ruy, you command may well come true. Today’s First Read from msnbc.com said: “at what point do three-way trial heats in national polls become a moot point?”
Nader’s difficulties are good news. In the intermediate and longer run it will really help Kerry. I wouldn’t even be surprised to see Nader drop out of the race now that he also has money problems. Despite his pride in seeing himself as the indespensible man of the left, he’s not the kind of politician to run up a big debt and then walk away from it.
I am concerned, however, at this morning’s news regarding Iraq. Bush was smart in pulling off the “turnover” in advance of the 30th. My ears pricked up though when I saw on CNN that Bush is now saying that Iraqi security is up to the Iraqis.
That makes me wonder if Bush’s strategy de jour is to put our troops into safe compounds out of harm’s way. In that way he can claim to be “staying the course” without incuring the casualties that bring down his poll numbers. It wouldn’t do the Iraqis any good, but it would save the lives of American troops and improve his chances in November.
All of this should remind us that this election will be decided by events on the ground in theatres of conflict with militant Islam. For better or worse, those events are controlled by radical Islamists or George Bush. All John Kerry can do is seize on any opening or mis-step of Bush’s. Not a good position to be in and it should help to explain Kerry’s caution up to now.
If you can’t convince the pollsters to take Nader’s name off, is it possible to convince them to add a Libertarian/Constitution candidate (is there even one yet?) to the polls?
I was under the impression that even the Reform Party ballot access in Michigan, Florida, Colorado etc. was being questioned due to the fact that that the Reform Party did not hold a convention, as required (they held a conference call).
I think the technically accurate phrasing is “Nader might have access in seven states through the Reform Party, but has not yet been placed on any state ballot.”
Ruy,
Can you shed some light on what it is about the polls that causes Nader’s number to range from 3-6% when he is included in the trial heats? Is this just static in the polls — that is, would any third candidate with some name recognition be expected to get about that amount? Or do you think there is a latent Nader support that might be as high as 6% but that in the end will vote for Kerry? If it’s the former, doesn’t it raise some questions about the polls generally, if there is such a sizable factor that’s just meaningless?
/Mark