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.
Its obvious that the press is not willing to go ahead and declare Kerry an outright winner of the debates and the person carrying the momentum at this time. I am not sure whats up with that, maybe they think there will be some bad reprisals if Bush got his first elected term in the HOUSE.
No matter what the press thinks or does however, its common knowledge that the electorate has assured Kerry that he won the three debates by wide margins.
In like manner, the electorate, by way of the polls, are also showing that they are learning to accept Kerry’s demeanor, his mannerisms, his style, his obvious honesty, his thorough knowledge of the English Language and how to use it, he wide knowledge base on relevant issues etc.. etc.. etc.
I guess Bush and his troop didnt quite expect to find another person on earth who would know more English than Bush himself, well they now know its not so.
Its early days and one should never fall into the pitts of over confidence and must stay on tract and keep the momentum going all the way to this time four years from now.. but, while you are at it, take some time to savour this moment.. it creates a most excellent feeling.. so why let it slip away!!!!!
Let’s not be to overconfident. We have Mo but I think we are in for all slime, all the time for the next 19 days. The only thing they’ve shown they have in their bag is to paint Kerry as a traitorous turncoat. The Swift Boat deal over again with much more money behind it. They have to make it uncomfortable for people who have begun feeling good about voting for Kerry. I hope Carville and his crew are ready to fight back and put these yahoos on the defensive.
I fear that election day may be so dirty, we’ll be looking at Afghanistan’s vote as a shining example of democracy.
Demtom:
They still have doubts about his replacement. They always do — even such lionized presidents as FDR, JFK, Reagan and Clinton were widely disaparaged/wondered about prior to their first elections. But the voters went to them ultimately because they thought change was necessary.
As usual, Demtom hits the nail on the head. The main thing Kerry had to do in this race was prove himself as a viable alternative to Bush, and he did so with flying colors in the debates.
The media will likely make it seem, when he wins, that the debates did it. Not totally true, but I do agree that it was the debates where the Bush talking-points were shown for the nonsense and fluff they were all along.
I thought Kerry did another solid job in the third debate, and deflected Bush’s criticisms when they verged upon saliency. Barring wild surprises, all Bush can do now is cry wolf (“he’s an anti-security liberal who can’t pay for his promises!”), pray something sticks (the “Tony Soprano” line tells me it won’t), and carry out his ground war. So long as Kerry and those of us supporting him keep up his good fight, this election is ours to win.
I agree with Demtom’s observations about the media. The narrative seems to be taking hold that Kerry’s campaign was drowning until two weeks ago when the debates started, giving him a life raft. In fact, throughout September Kerry was behind but still very competitive in most polls. The ones that pointed to a Bush blowout (which were often treated as gospel by much of the mainstream media) often used dubious samples and methodology, a point that we argued on these boards in great detail.
In a sense I do wish we could have even more debates, but in another sense I don’t. It’s really nerve-wracking to worry about your candidate making a fatal gaffe with all the eyes of the media and the nation focused on you, and in the debates all it takes is one ill-considered sentence or answer to do that.
John Kerry to me is an acquired taste. Unlike Bill Clinton, for example, he does not go to great lengths to try to get you to swoon over him the first time you see him. His entire approach to campaigning bespeaks a kind of faith in the old verities our mothers told us about how, in the end, character is what counts, and that if you’re a good egg the people who know you will come to know that. In our age this bespeaks a bold, one might almost say daring, faith in the ultimate good judgment of the voters. A concern his approach creates among his supporters is whether voters will acquire enough of a taste for him in time to vote for him. My perception is that over these debates Kerry is winning a lot of folks over, slowly but surely. For when it comes to John Kerry, the surprises are pretty much all good ones. He turns out to be the sturdy, reliable, steadfast friend, the one whose advice you might seek out on an important matter or who you’d want to be your best man–not the hell-raising party animal you met in college who, a couple of years after graduation, remains most notable to you for being–the hell-raising party animal from your college years.
To those inclined to vote for Bush because they think he is more the kind of guy they’d like to have a beer with, I’d say vote for Kerry. Although I hope Bush does not go back to drinking after he leaves office–this being unbecoming behavior from a former President–it will free up more of his time for informal, unscripted social occasions.
If Kerry wins 19 days from now (which I think is an ever-increasing possibility), the media consensus, I’m certain, will be that he won because he won the debates. Some will probably go further — taking the goosed post-GOP convention polls as gospel, they’ll proclaim that Kerry was “on the ropes” until extricating himself with a knockout first debate and solid victories in the later two.
I’m not about to argue with the fact that Kerry has done better in all three debates — he’s smarter, more presidential, all those things. But I’d argue that an opposite dynamic is actually at play: Kerry’s going to win the election, and that’s why he’s won the debates.
The voting public is not as shallow as the media conglomorate like to believe; they don’t switch votes based on a stray catch-phrase, a bad camera angle. They make their Election Day decision not on assorted trivia, but on the basics of presidential performance: how’s the economy? What’s our status in the world? Are things going well? On all those scores, Bush has been losing ever since Iraq started to go south. The continuing sub-par recovery in the economy keeps Bush on the defensive in another vital area. But for a few, artificially (and typically) inflated polls right after his convention, Bush has polled below 50% (including a shocking 43% from CBS the other day). The public WANTS a new president.
They still have doubts about his replacement. They always do — even such lionized presidents as FDR, JFK, Reagan and Clinton were widely disaparaged/wondered about prior to their first elections. But the voters went to them ultimately because they thought change was necessary.
Kerry did well in all the debates, but all he really needed to do was meet a minimum standard. Once he did that, the voters were going to judge him the winner of the encounters, because they have already deemed Bush’s POLICIES a loser.
Another beatdown. I think we’ll see Kerry moving up in the polls as this final debate settles in people’s minds.
“Wonder how that [ABC] poll would have turned out without an 8 point Republican party ID advantage.”
We can do a rough calculation of how the ABC poll came out for independents.
Respondents: 38 R, 30 D, 28 I
Results: 42 Kerry, 41 Bush, 14 tied
Assume that R’s backed their man and D’s the same. (Probably some deviation on both sides, but it likely cancels out.)
Then: 12 (42-30) Kerry, 3 (41-38) Bush, 14 tied
Changing to %ages: 41% Kerry, 10% Bush, 48% tied
(Numbers do not add to 100% due to rounding.)
Well, I actually watched the debate. I thought Kerry absolutely owned the first thirty minutes of the debate and dominated Bush. I thought Kerry’s victory in this debate was more pronounced than the first debate (which I thought was closer than the blowout it is now regarded as). I am not at all surprised at the instant poll results. My non-political sister called during last night’s debate to express how stunned she was at Bush’s lousy performance (she didn’t watch either of the first two).
I think the talking heads are so used to Bush’s eccentric mannerisms and lack of speaking ability that they don’t realize how off-putting he is to watch unfiltered. It is for that reason (along with their being afraid of accusations of liberal bias) that the “analysts” right after each debate have acted as if the debates have been a draw, when they weren’t. The nightly news edits out Bush’s awkward moments, which makes him look a lot smoother than he actually is. The debates shattered that media-created image.
It really was a trip to the woodshed for poor W. Tim Grieve sees big trouble ahead for Bush’s ratings in his just-posted article on Salon. (Get the day pass if you don’t have subscription).
I didn’t watch the debate, but — judging from a number of [mostly-] widely divergent blogosphere comments — it seems it was basically another draw. I would have preferred a sub-par “Shrub” performance, but unless the post-debate spins against JFK, I think he can live with this result. After all, the polls indicate a a majority of viewers felt Kerry’s performance was more convincing. Again.
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Predictably, wingerville is hyping the “War President’s best-ever debate performance” but I suspect there is more than a little bit of wishful thinking/desperate spin going on.
MARCU$
I thought the comments for this topic were especially on target.
Kerry has sealed the deal with voters.
Bush has shown the voters that his best is mediocre, and it goes downhill from there. Kerry has done the opposite. Suddenly, $100 million of negative attacks rendered meaningless.
Bush’s attack lines have been reduced to cotton candy, with equal weight.
HA-ppy – days -are -HERE a-again!
The skys above are CLEAR again,
So, let’s sing a song of CHEER again.
HA-ppy DAYS are here a-GAIN!!!
[Release balloons, cue the band]
How can you support Bush when he lied to you again within the first five minutes of the debate. I remember clear as day that man said he was not concerned about Osama Bin Laden. Cheney lied about never meeting Edwards before until their debate. If they lie about these petty things what else are they lying about and to what extent will they take thier conserative views to. No child ;eft behind? My little brother was in second grade and could not read, why? Because he did not have a spelling book- if you can’t spell you can’t read. Bush said himself he can’t speak english as good as his wife. I think Bush needs to be left behind.
I agree.
This third debate is where Kerry sealed the deal.
He proved that he is presidential, can laugh at himself and Teresa, and will lead the country in a better direction.
Bush proved that at the top of his game, he’s weak.
I think we will see the polls solidify for Kerry.
CNN/Gallup poll even more impressive: a 14% Kerry win.
Kerry scored a clean win tonight, and ends the “series” 3-0. In all three debates, he looked more presidential than the president, and he calmly, methodically and forcefully dismantled every single element critical to Bush’s reelection chances. The polls have been starting to move in Kerry’s direction and it seems likely that this performance tonight will only accelerate that trend. As a Democrat, I am a happy camper tonight. Let’s roll up our sleeves, do the the work that still needs to be done, and bring this baby home.