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.
Here’s one evangelical Christian smart enough to know that making something illegal isn’t always the solution. So I voted for Kerry, the obvious choice for a progressive born-again who wants to be like Jesus. And I’m sure there were others at my huge southern baptist church that did the same.
Democrats may be looking for a scapegoat for their loss, thus the myth that “values voters” stole the election. However, Conservative Christians have lost no time in taking credit for Bush’s win, either. At some point, if enough people believe it, does myth become truth?
Check this article about Jerry Falwell reviving his Moral Majority. This kook certainly believes his followers played a large role in winning this election for Bush. Falwell Invigorated by Election (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,141218,00.html).
Then who the hell voted for Bush? And on what basis? If the percentage of “value voters” (and I would consider myslef amongst that elite) actually dropped, how did John Kerry lose? On the issues? Does anything make any sense here?
Whatever the reason, Bush managed to turn out a lot of voters that do not normally vote. I was checking off our GOTV for the local Dems at the polls in Red State Indiana. Turnout was far higher than expected. My GOP counterpart was getting pissy because a lot of voters showed up that were not on her GOTV list. Well they were not on my GOTV list either. I thought well, high turnout is good for the Dems, but not so.
There are a LOT of swing voters in Indiana. Bush won by a large margin, but Evan Bayh got re-elected with about 60%. Then Daniels won the gov race by a large margin (the bad economy worked for Daniels- go figure).
My own thoughts on many of these voters is they are not happy with the way things are going, but support Bush because he is making life miserable for the Iraqis. These voters are not sophisticated enough to distinguish between Saddam and Osama, Iraqi, Afghani as many polls have shown.
This is the way it works in High School, the pinnacle of education for many of these voters. If you don’t fight, people will pick on you. If you fight, you will get picked on less. If you can get a reputation for fighting dirty, no one will mess with you period. This is the way they see foreign policy and think that if Bush fights someone (anyone) and the US is the baddest MF on the planet, then the terrorists will leave us alone. Not that any of this is true, but this is the world view from the red states.
But, as that font of DC conventional wisdom Cokie Roberts once arrogantly said, It doesn’t matter if it’s true; it’s what’s generally believed. The Beltway pundits have by and large bought into it in a big way — today’s NY Times actually tries to shoehorn the box-office success of Christmas with the Kranks into a “Christian uprising” theme. And certainly the ludicrous pre-empting of Saving Private Ryan from TV represents media fear of the Ralph Reed-led giant.
And you know what? — I’m not sure this is so bad for Democrats. Back as far as the Reagan era, Democrats found their one salient argument against re-electing the Gipper was scaring people about the influence of Jerry Falwell. The Gary Bauers of the GOP are being quite forthright about wanting to see results — not sometime in the future; NOW. The more power they feel they have, the more they’ll push the administration into taking positions at odds with the vast middle of the country (which remains moderate in policy). Those teetering Republicans — the ones who stayed with Bush rather than defecting a la John Eisenhower/Bill Milliken, but who are really iffy about it — could finally make the move Dem-weard as a result.
The administration already has to worry about a shaky economy and an Iraq almost bound to explode. A “we want it now” religious right is the last thing it needs.
Early on, I remember a blog or news item that highlighted the fact that, when asked pointblank, what “moral values” were we talking about, the answers were vague and fuzzy, nothing very specific. Haven’t seem much commentary since, but if true, maybe the spin doctors got lucky with a slippery phrase, like “family values”?????
I have become increasingly irritated, nowhere in all the “moral values” discussions have I seen noted the opposite effect on “bluestate” voters of the insinuated acceptance that we HAVE no moral values!!!
That discussion has yet to take place. Why have we progressive liberals allowed the framing of this issue to be one of acceptance of the accusation we have no values? It seems to me we accept the guilt.
As a person whose job took me around the US, particulary in the South, I was shocked at the value system I found as compared to the Northeast. Comeon the accusation is a myth!!! Examine the issue do the state by state checks and you’ll be amazed at our ethical, ethnic roots which really rule the blue states!!! Put simply we all know who our grandparents where and what they believed in. That is exactly what is wrong with Kansas. They don’t have ethnic roots as simple as that.
Just for the record, I was a subject of the Zogby poll for the last couple-few years, and immediately after the election we were given that question for the first time. Previously, I’d felt frustrated by the question asking me which of a number of issues had been the one most influential in how I cast my vote – there wasn’t an “all of the above”, but I regard more than one or two issues as vital.
The “moral values” question was perfect for me, since it covered everything. I voted for Kerry based on my moral values, of course. Didn’t everyone?
I have a few questions. First, why are we supposed to take the post-election polls as gospel truth when the exit polls, which are supposed to be very accurate, were way off?
Second, I wonder if “values voters” are being defined too narrowly by this analysis. It seems to me that a lot of churches are violating their tax-free status by mixing political propaganda with regular worship and Bible study. They’re not just pushing the Republican point of view on abortion and gay marriage, but also on all kinds of other issues. I believe it was Marshall Wittman who said he became disenchanted with the Christian Coalition because it was pushing for all of Grover Norquist’s pet tax policies.
Clergy who take an active role in Republican poliltics may not frame everything in terms of what we consider “values” issues. For instance, Mike Hintz, a youth minister in an Assembly of God Church in Des Moines, appeared at a Bush campaign rally this fall, praising Bush for his values, but he emphasized how tax cuts had saved his family of six money. (Since the election, Hintz has been fired after local media reported that he was having an affair with a 17-year-old congregant, but that’s another story.)
Church is a focal point of many people’s lives, and if they get a strong message about how to vote from pastors, it can be very influential. When polled, these people might not list moral values as the number one issue–they might list tax cuts or the war on terror–but that doesn’t mean that they are not influenced by the religious right’s political agenda.
I fear that voters like this will not be receptive to any Democrat, no matter how well we craft the message and how good a messenger we find. Week in and week out, they are getting the message from their home away from home that Republicans are good and Democrats are bad.
Frankly, I’m pretty happy with the Christian Right taking away the idea that they have a mandate for shoving their version of “values” down our throats. One thing Americans ultimately have in common….we hate being told what to do or how to think. I’m OK with letting the morals mythology ride for awhile…..