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.
Yes, there may be something Kerry can say before the Election to help himself even more on national security–give either a major address as a couple of others have suggested, or insert as a lead for his stump speech every day until it gets reported, Bush’s debate 3 bin laden screwup, and hammer him on it.
They might want to keep that one in their back pocket to save for the day when we get the next terrorist attack alert. One line of attack could be along the lines of “The President can’t make up his mind. He says he’s not worried about bin laden, and he outsourced the job of capturing bin laden when our troops had him cornered in Afghanistan. But then the Administration issues terror attack alerts whenever it most wants to change the subject. The President seems confused. He seems to think issuing terror attack alerts, instead of isolating and destroying those who have attacked us, is the way to make us safer. Meanwhile, aided by this Administration’s inept foreign policy, al qaeda has many more members now than before 9/11. My Administration will never take its eye off the national security ball.”
I’ve seen a number of posters lament how the B/C spin machine has managed to deflect a fair amount of media attention after the third debate from Bush’s loss to the flap about Cheney’s daughter.
Just where is it written that if our side is unable to whack them hard in the first day or two of coverage after a major event that we have lost our one and only chance? The closer to the election we hammer Bush on his bin laden misstatement the better. There’s no statute of limitations on when we can use an opponent’s most eggregious mistakes against him. The same comment applies to Bush’s remarks several weeks ago saying we cannot win the war on terror. That gives K/E and the rest of us another fat target to shoot at.
Another “theme for the day” K/E might use is stem cell research. I thought the stances of the candidates came out fuzzy in the second debate, which might explain why a far smaller percentage of voters say Kerry’s position is closer to their own than is actually the case. K/E could clarify what the difference in the positions of the candidates is on this issue and what the consequences are for the possibilities of curing many serious diseases, as well as generating good jobs in an emerging market. This issue from what I’ve seen plays extremely well for us with independents the more people get to know about it. And it can split off or help neutralize that portion of the business community which understands and covets the potential that stem cell research represents.
Of late it looks as though K/E’s strategy is to slam Bush hard on a different, politically sensitive issue each day, to keep them on the defensive and nip in the bud their efforts to frame the story line of the day. Obviously it is not wholly succeeding but K/E clearly are on the offensive.
By all means take up Michael Kazin’s suggestion to give us as much state-by-state data as possible. That’s what counts now.
JY
the new cnn/usat/gallup has bush up 52 to 44. i have to wonder if thats with a rupublican slant in the percentages taken. seems like in the past couple of polls that they put out, they had more or less equaled to numbers of dems and repubs. a few weeks ago when they were taking samples with large repubs slants they were giving bush double diget leads.
sorry about the grammatical errors in my last comment — was very tired when I typed it.
The polls at RealClear politics, not just the NEWSWEEK poll but the Gallup also, and others, show Kerry tanking badly over the past few days.
I am certain that this is due to the much exploited Bai article and its fallout NOT Mary Cheney. There have been columns throughout the press about how Kerry is soft on terror, and Kerry has failed to respond just like his campaign did for the longest time to the flipflop spin. Then everyone else goes around pretending that there’s nothing odd going on and just justifying the lying.
Drudge is trumpeting the latest Gallup farce that shows Bush leading by 8% in LV and 3-4% in RV.
Ruy,
As we wind down to Nov 2, if you can get us some respectable state polls — FL, PA, OH, NM, NV —
it would be appreciated.
As a campaign nears its end, I always look at crowd size and enthusiasm as an awfully good indicator of how the race is going. Not prescreeened crowds, that is.
Does anyone have some descriptions of the relative size and nature of recent campaign events?
A.
Very good news. But I’m looking forward to your analysis of the new CNN/USA TODAY/GALLUP POLL that has Bush ahead with likely voters by 8 points, 52 to 44. I sure hope they oversampled Republicans.
Oops… I meant “extremely unlikely”, not “extremely likely”.
The sort of mistake that happens when you are in a hurry… as pollsters are these days.
They favor stricter control laws by 49 to 8? Is that a typo?
More of a question than a comment. Any recent polling on environmental isues? This was not touched at all at the last debates, and only casually discussed at the first two debates. But it is a critical issue for many voters, particularly voters in some swing areas, e.g. Colorado. I know this issue is defining for me. I’m a one-issue voter on this issue, and you know who I’ll be voting for (and against).
Thanks,
Barry
Ruy- Good news about the Time poll, of course. But then there’s the Newsweek poll– and the continuing gap in the tracking polls.
I think it’s about time to do a state-by-state analysis rather than taking comfort in the issue breakdown, no? After all, Americans agreed with Dukakis on most of the issues as well– but that didn’t help him at all!
Michael Kazin
There are some strange things in this poll.
For one thing, there are errors in the tables. The number of LVs in the most recent poll exceeds the number of RVs; the numbers seem to be transposed. And in the income breakdown (and much credit to Time for giving us these numbers!) the total for the most recent poll adds up to only 92%.
The horse race numbers for likely voters with Nader are also strange. The result is given as 45-45-3 with 1% for others, 3% undecided, and 3% refused. But the same result, with refuseds taken out, are 48 Bush, 46 Kerry, 3 Nader, with 0% others and 3% undecided. Some changes can occur as a result of rounding when you take out the refuseds, but not these. A change from 0% difference to 2% difference is extremely likely. (It should not occur unless before removing the refuseds the unrounded difference was between 0.97% and 1.0% AND the exact Kerry percentage was between 44.50% and 44.53%.) And I don’t see at all how the “others” could go from 1% to 0% as when the refuseds are removed.
Another discrepancy is not an obvious error, but cast doubt on the results. There is a 5% Dem advantage in party identification among RVs, but only 1% among LVs. Yet the Bush-Kerry result is essentially the same among both populations.
Here’s another way to look at it. Assume the RV/LV numbers were simply transposed and the poll had 131 “unlikely voters”. We can compute approximately that the unlikely voters consisted of 9 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and 75 independent/refused/other. (This is a pretty rough calculation because rounding errors are significant, but it should not be not wildly off.)This distribution seems unlikely. And it seems even more unlikely that such a group of voters would break evenly in the presidential race, or only slightly for Kerry, which is what the comparison of poll numbers between likely and registered voters seems to say.
Several possible explanations occur to me. First, more errors in the tables. Second, the registered and likely voter numbers are separately weighted, and the changes are artifacts of the weighting process. (The weighting coefficients will have random fluctuations caused both by statistical fluctuations in the sample and numerical errors in the estimation process.) Third, but unlikely, the “unlikely voter” sample is a statistical outlier.
I would like to know more.
I continue to be amazed by the “Commander and Chief” and “War on Terror” numbers. A majority of the public finally sees that Iraq had no connection to 9/11 and sees the invasion and occupation as a mistake, but many are still more comfortable with Bush. At this late date, is Kerry better off changing the subject to domestic issues, or is their anything he can say that will drive down Bush’s advantage on the security issues?
On another issue: the most recent Newsweek poll shows a reverse gender gap (more men for Kerry, more women for Bush). Is this an anomoly? If not, what gives? Has anyone seen any good explanations?
Isn’t it likely that the two day blip Zogby saw was just reflecting the Lesbian flap that was boosted by CNN, et. al.? Claire Shipman argued on ABC that it meant Bush had “won” the third debate, despite all polls to contrary.
This Time poll is good news. But on ABC “This Week” W/George S they (George will, Ron Suskind Bill Kaschich (Fox News) and Claire Shipman) paint a different picture Ms. Shipman said “Contrary tp the snap polls after the last debate” she thinks more Americans thought George Bush won. Because he had more clear answers to the questions??????!!!!! Its a GOP “LoveFest”. How can Kerrry win when corporate media is so increasingly biased. I could not believe it!!!!!
One set of numbers is wrong (“leadership in difficult times”): 52 – 40 isn’t an 8-point spread.
“By 69-22 voter favor using discarded embryos to conduct stem cell research; by 49-34 they say Kerry is closer to their position on this issue than Bush.”
So, this discrepancy means that either 1. people are stupid and can’t connect the dots or 2. some hate Kerry so much that they can’t say anything positive about him even when he share their positions.
That poll is indeed very good news.
It suggests that Kerry needs to act both defensively and offensively. Since terrorism is his weak point — he MUST act quickly in the ways described in other posts with an NYU length speech etc. to counter the Bai spin, and slam into Bush on the Osama lie and his failure on terrorism policy. Silence will only leave voters with same impression. Although not as slimy as the Swift Boat Veterans for Slime, attacking at strong suit is important to do.
Then there is the issues where Bush is most vulnerable domestically — jobs/economy and the deficit. The way the strategic deficit is designed to be used as a lever against social security Cost of Living Adjustments, “diet COLA” they call it, is good to raise. And Kerry was right to raise the draft and can come back with “they doth protest overmuch”
(a good line to use now in the draft context, given its myriad resonances).
With a big enough GOTV (not simply doing what has been done in the past only bigger but something qualitatively on a whole new scale). If it is possible to confound the agenda in this election by the Democrats really pursuing it, that could make a big difference. Broadside ads against voting Repub for Congress would be good in the final stretch — something Gore never bothered to do.
Two things from looking at poll:
a) they didn’t ask about ‘just says what thinks people want to hear’ or ‘wishywashy’ or other character type issues
b) heavily skewed in favor of Democrats, moreso than previous polls, but with 4-5% edge for Democrats in line with 2000 vote. With all new registrations, might be right
I really appreciate your postings. It helps me to fathom what is happening in the world of polls.