A Time magazine poll reported on August 6th concluded “Just as the Democratic Party convention gave the Kerry campaign very little “bounce” in the polls, so have last week’s elevated terror alerts had only limited impact on an electorate already largely decided, according to the latest TIME poll. Senator John Kerry leads President Bush among likely voters by a margin of 48% to 43%, with Ralph Nader running at 4%.”
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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.
Well, I won’t be satisfied unless his numbers go back up to the 92% he registered just after 911.
So How to do it. Well, he should lead the whole Republican Convention down to the Hole at Ground Zero, prostrate themselves on the cold ground, and beg forgiveness (Fundi Style) for his failure to take care of his responsibilities after the August 6th warning from the CIA memo. If they beat their breasts long and loud enough, sing lots of songs about how they’ve been forgiven and made whole and all that, raise their arms to the heavens — and then produce bin Laden and burn him at the stake down in the hole — I think that would turn the trick on jacking up their numbers again.
Rove should make sure he acquires a really grand pipe organ for this scene, plus lots of red and orange lights for a massive light show. We are taling about the lord really speaking through the mouths of the Republican Party here, and it’s got to have massive production values.
Don’t!! Don’t you raise those debate expectations again! That was the single most stupid thing the Gore campaign did in 2000: They practically declared their candidate Plato reborn. And then Gore gave his ghastly performance. I still believe he lost it right there, within 1 1/2 hours on October 3rd 2000. (“Can I have the last question?”) He recovered until election day, but as we all know it wasn’t enough.
So please, please let’s all presume Kerry will be a stiff, boring, sad figure, no match for this amiable, charming chap that is the President. Shall we?
Bounce!!!!…. me thinks that this elections aint about bounce. Dont be too surprised if the market isnt too concerned with what Bush has to say.
Lets face it, what can he say? what can say that he has not yet said? If Bush brought new policies to the table, who would believe him?
I think that those who are going to vite for Bush have alrewady been counted. In this regard, I would be surprised to see any significant bounce.
If significant bounce does occur, it would be an indictment on the peoples of america. My mom have ofter said that I should never let the same dog bite me twice. How many times would we allow Bush to promise and never deliver? How many times would we allow him to speak in abstracts with nothing definitive to say? How many times would we allow him to spew rhetoric with a smirk?
I am keen to hear his proposals for his next term in office. I am not even interested in hearing how to plans to handle the iraq situation, or Iran or north Korea. I dont want to hear anything about foregn affairs or any such subject. I just want to hear these great and glowing and powerful proposals to heal America and get the economy on a proper footing.
His current proposals have the economy going like a car with a shaky spark plug. One minute its going, next its chugging along, next its smoking.. you just cant ever sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. So I am waiting and listening with both ears to hear his new plans for 2005 and beyond. I know it will be a plethora of jokes and lies.
I agree that his jab at Kerry did place Kerry between a rock and hard place but I thought to myself that kerry handled that issue many times before and hence it wasnt worth the energy. However, I hope kerry will learn something from Bush’ ploy and that is… “Set the Agenda”. That exactly what Bush is attempting to do. He is seeking to keep Kerry defending and hence never having a chance to attack and make Bush defend.
Its not rocket science, so I hope his handlers recognise the ploy and do everything to diffuse it. Personally, Bush has enough on his plate for Kerry to keep attacking, literally everyday. I dont think he is doing it tho.. but if he thinks that he needs to, he has enough issues on which to push Bush back on the defensive.
In any event, I hope that Kerry never allows this to happen again in this season. I hope that the simply pushes Bush all the way back to Texas..
Cheers
If Bush gets less than a 15 point bounce he’s dead. Typically, the bounce fritters away in a week or two anyway, and then we’re into debates. Even taking into account the lowered expectations for Bush’s performance, I’m still thinking he won’t unravel, but Kerry will be very impressive. The rest of the bounce will turn take a nose dive and Kerry will be going into the election in very good shape.
Bush should get AT LEAST a 15 point bounce coming out of the Republican Convention. After the convention it will obviously become clear that George Bush’s outstanding leadership should be apparent to most americans. If he doen’t get this bounce which is of course the usual it will mean he is in trouble. (Fellow Dems, I am of course kidding).
Allow me to be the first to predict that George Bush will get a 15% bounce from the Republican National Convention. This is based on historical data involving incumbent Republican presidents who did not win the popular vote in their first election for president. If he does not get the historically predicted 15% bounce, consider the convention a failure for all involved.
I have to agree that responding to Bush’s “question” wasn’t strategically a good idea. Effectively, Kerry validated Bush’s decision to go to war, removing one of the major potential criticisms of the administration. But dodging a question that the Bush campaign would have continued to ask – and more importantly continued to point out that Kerry wasn’t answering would have been just as bad, if not worse.
Maybe we misunderstood, and he really said “we’ve turned to the coroner…”
the question is… where on earth is the corner… any reasons why kerry responded to Bush’s question on Iraq? I thought he had given that response many moons ago… why did he allow Bush to lead him into that question?
Is anyone thinking that Kerry is getting ahead of Bush too fast? Does anyone think that he might soon find his peek and then start to tumble back down the other side?
Cheers
Of course we have the convention comming up with a week of listening how great the economy is and getting better. His choir got quite a jolt last week with the news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I think Georgie is taking a page from Herbert Hoover who promised a “Chicken in Every Pot” just before the depressiion of the 30’s. “Vote For Me Everything Is Just Around The Corner”.
All the Kings horses and all the Kings men can’t seem to put “Humpty Dumpty” together . Most of the news media have become shills for GW. Maybe the electorat isn’t so dumb after all.
The website 2.004K.com lists national and state polls. Of the most recent 32 polls listed, Bush leads in two, one (Arkansas) is a tie, and Kerry leads in the other 29. Moreover, the two in which Bush led (one poll each in Florida and Ohio) have since been supersed by polls which show Kerry leading in both states.