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.
The comments by Sagacious make more sense to me than do Cynthia Tucker’s arguments. If Democrats take comfort from the polls that show them preferred over Republicans, then they should heed the warnings from the same polls that show an overwhelming majority of all Americans, Democrats included, object to unchecked illegal immigration and the continued bestowing of benefits on non-citizens, such as a New York driver’s license. Tucker ruins much of her argument by bringing up the straw man issue of forced expulsion of the 12 to 20 million illegals said to already be in the U.S. No rational opponent of the so called comprehensive solution to illegal immigration suggests rounding up illegals and sending them back en mass. The problem is that no national Democrat has even come up with a plan that really stops future illegal immigration. Where are the proposed new laws that put employers who hire illegals in prison? Where are the proposals to reimburse states and cities for what they are having to spend to control illegal immigration because the federal government has abdicated its responsibilities. Democrats may think they can prevail on this issue by taking the so called “high road”, but for citizens who think this is an important issue, they only drive them back into the arms of the Republicans or force them to sit on their hands.
One thing that Turner misses in this essay is that the sixties were a time of financial prosperity for Americans. Jobs were plentiful and people beleived they could succeed with hard work.
The new millenial does not at all have economic prosperity for vast numbers of working Americans, consequently they are unwilling to share the meager resources available to eek out a living for themselves. Many have lost their jobs and homes.
We may be a nation of immigrants but America is in a self-preservation mode, families are unable to feed themselves, they do not have health insurance and education is deplorable in terms of inadequate funding for children of American citizens.
For this reason the noble reasons for immigration will fall on deaf ears. Too many Americans have seen their jobs outsourced or unions busted with ‘immigrant labor’ destroying the unions as a new labor pool willing to accept menial wages that do not provide an American standard of living wage. Too many Americans have seen the influx of immigrant children into the education system crowding out needed programs for their children to meet the language and learning needs of immigrants. Too many Americans can’t pay for their own children to go to college and are outrage to have to consider making immigrant children who graduate from the public school system eligible for federal loans. The healthcare system is overwhelmed with immigrant patients without insurance and that deprives Americans who are waiting behind them in the ER for their own healthcare. Americans are angry and destitute with the harshness of the economics which will not allow a single wage earner to support a family. Individuals have to work 2 jobs just to survive and that leaves no time for a ‘life’ to enjoy family and their kids.
At this time in our history Americans are only willing to choose hope over fear, tolerance over division and the beloved community over bigotry for their OWN needs. To suggest they give the food off their plates to immigrants will create a huge backlash.
Immigration is a losing issue for Democrats and they should NOT attempt to stand up on this issue, as it is the WRONG time to do so.
The principles are right but the timing is completely wrong. Americans will give when they have enough for themselves to SHARE right now is NOT that time. Americans are not willing to share or offer helping hands because they are struggling to keep for themselves afloat.
The best idea to offer illegal immigrants is to go into the military and use that as a route to earn citizenship. At least then they will only be competing with families who also volunteer to give the ultimate sacrifice to this country.
Great idea Tucker…wrong time.
there’s another as yet unspoken argument that ought to be made by those proposing a progressive immigration policies and it begins with the question of “why would people risk their lives and be separated from their homes and families to come to the US to work at backbreaking jobs for menial wages?” the answer is simple: they do not see a future for themselves in their native homelands. a progressive immigration policy goes hand in hand with a progressive trade policy that lifts up the living standards of our trading partners and encourages their entrepreneurial and risk taking people (what else can the journey to the US be called beside a highly risky entrepreneurial venture built on optimism) to stay home and build up their own economies and societies. but that would of course necessitate shaking off the moneyed wing of the party and its unclear that the dems in leadership positions have the “brass balls” to do that (yes, that is an implicit reference to rahm emmanuel).