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.
All form and no substance. Biden says he would support repudiation of Puerto Rico’s debt borrowed between 2012 and 2014 because the island borrowed it in violation of its own statutory debt ceiling. But, that is only $6 billion out of a total of $123 billion which Puerto Rico owes on its bonded indebtedness and unfunded pension obligations. He would also forgive $300 million in disaster loans. That, too, is a drop in the bucket. Puerto Rico’s debt amounts to $35,000 per capita while her income is just $12,000 per capita. This debt is not going to be paid unless Biden would charge it to the U.S. taxpayer, which would be a distinct injustice considering that Puerto Ricans do not pay income tax. Puerto Rico should simply declare bankruptcy.
Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy a long time ago. Its debt is already in the process of being restructured. The restructuring will in no circumstance mean that federal government or taxpayers take over PR bond payments.
What Biden must endorse unequivocally is to wipe out bonds at at level close to or preferably above 90%. Puerto Rico can’t afford to ever get back on its feet and pay this debt. In exchange maybe prohibit Puerto Rico from issuing new debt in the future or at least for like a few decades.
You are correct, Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy already.
Democrats should have been focusing on registering Puerto Ricans if the party really wanted to leverage this demographic advantage. Even if 28% of Puerto Ricans in Florida are voting for Trump (which shouldn’t be surprising if Democrats actually understood Puerto Rican political culture), this is still an important advantage.
There are major differences between Puerto Ricans who live in the deep Blue states where Democrats traditionally encounter us (New York, Connecticut, Massachussetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois), the majority of which have now lived in the continental US for at least one and very often several generations, and Puerto Ricans who have been moving to Florida and other Sun Belt states in the past two decades due to the island’s economic depression.
In both cases it is well documented in political science literature that there are major get out the vote problems as well. But registering newcomers is very low hanging fruit.
The major issue is that traditionally the Democratic party has ignored Puerto Ricans because in the deep Blue states in the north their vote wasn’t particularly needed, at least at the local level which is where most political contestation takes place. In fact suppressing the Puerto Rican vote was actually a common racist strategy in northern US cities for a long time. Democrats would actually lose statewide offices like Governor than have Puerto Ricans mobilized politically and have us win local offices and challenge local balance of power.
So when it comes to making effective appeals for registering voters in places like Florida the Democratic party will have to come up with whole new strategies because they can’t copy models from the north because those models either don’t exist and/or are not applicable to the particular culture of newly arrived Puerto Ricans.
Unlike northern cities where Puerto Ricans arrive to be at least partially craddled in local more liberal (social and political) culture and where there is virtually no presence of the Republican party, in places like Florida Puerto Ricans have options.
So even if Puerto Ricans don’t fully identify with US politics (you have to understand the particular dynamics of Puerto Ricans nationalism and identity in this regard), those that do become interested in elections will not be automatically steered towards the Democratic party.
Without peer pressure and without the most rudimentary level of political education from local community and political organizations, Puerto Ricans have only the very little information they got from media back when they lived on the island to count on as a starting point mixed with our political culture derived from Puerto Rico’s own particular and unique political history.
Democrats need to understand that for Puerto Ricans and many other Hispanics the main source of US news are right wing outlets like CNN en Espanol that are constantly obsessing about Cuba, Venezuela, etc.
Apart from that framework (socialism is bad for Latin America), US news is reported in Hispanic countries in the most superficial matter possible, often centered exclusively on issues like immigration (framed as a form of racism), even though Hispanics have quite nuanced views on this subject.
The immigration issue distinguishes Puerto Ricans partially from other Hispanics, as Puerto Ricans are born US citizens. But in fact most Hispanics don’t support anything like an open borders immigration policy. They don’t support it for the United States and they didn’t support it for their countries of origin. Immigration between Latin American countries is a major divisive issue. Hispanics don’t see immigration as a purely racial issue, like Blacks and so many white liberals in the US do, which explains why Blacks are the demographic with the highest levels of support for immigration. Hispanics can distinguish between racism and xenophobia in ways that more educated white liberals can’t or choose to ignore.
Another important difference between Hispanics and Blacks is that Democrats can’t and shouldn’t count on churches as places of political socialization. While Blacks churches will train and deliver the Black Democratic vote at 90% level, Hispanics churches may actually both train and deliver the Republican segments of the Hispanic electorate. This is true of both Puerto Ricans and Hispanics in general, specially when it comes to evangelicals.
The impact of religion in Latin America has been in support of the right both domestically and in terms of who immigrants vote for when they move to the US, unless they move to deep Blue states where the Democratic party has a monopoly and/or is able to exert fundamental peer pressure due to major debates over immigration (like the ones had in California).
Domestic Latin American political cultures (due to somewhat complex reasons, including US intervention and influence) have a deep degree of animosity towards communism and tolerance for right wing authoritarianism. Instead of a liberal left what is most often present is a populist center. These political values need to be overriden by Democrats when they socialize Hispanics.
Puerto Rico is no different. The biggest party in Puerto Rico is right wing. The second party is clearly in the center. All efforts to create left wing parties on the island fizzle. The island has a long history of political authoritarianism and populism and rather little experience with liberalism.
Puerto Rican political culture is conservative. But not in the US sense of conservatism. Puerto Ricans won’t be swayed by right wing talk of low taxes and deregulation. It is not conservative in the moral sense either. Puerto Ricans won’t obsess over guns, abortion and gays. Yet it is still conservative in the sense of not being swayed by liberalism over the left wing position on these issues either.
Like most Hispanics (and sharing this trait with most Black voters), Puerto Ricans politically care about bread and butter issues, even if they are not particularly informed about how these issues play out in the policy arena. They know they can’t trust Republicans with healthcare or education, but may be ambivalent (like too many Democrats are) about how Republicans handle the economy.
On foreign policy too one will find this Hispanic ambivalence, being skeptical of Republican military adventurism and imperialism, while finding Democrats’ ambiguous stance on Latin American left wing authoritarianism misinformed, simplistic, moralistic and potentially dangerous to their former home countries.
The danger for Democrats in dealing with Puerto Ricans therefore lies in focusing on immigration, failing to develop a discourse that addresses both left wing and right wing authoritarianism at home and abroad with sufficient nuance and clarity, not addressing the Republican advantage over the economy and talking too much about Puerto Rico’s political status. In other words, Puerto Ricans have in many ways a lot more in common with the white working class vote than they have with other Democratic constituencies.
Democrats should address Puerto Ricans in the context of the particular problems of the cities and states they live in. There is not a single message that can be targeted at Puerto Ricans nationally in very effective way, at least not effective enough to get them to both register and turn out.
In places like New York and the rest of the north you have to address the welfare traps, in work poverty, social mobility, discrimination in housing, in education and in work opportunities, how to make it easier to commute to jobs.
In places like Florida (specially Central Florida) you have to talk about the very low minimum wage (even by huge employers like Disney), how to maintain unemployment low while raising wages and benefits, how to expand Medicaid but keep taxes low.
Puerto Ricans work in completely different economic sectors in the north and the south. In the north you will find concentration in healthcare and the public sector. In the south you will find more concentration in the private sector like hospitality. The wage structure, work experience, relationship to taxes and welfare will be completely different for someone who works as a teacher in NYC from someone who works for Disney in Orlando.
If Democrats want to address the particularity of Puerto Ricans at the national level they should focus on a single issue: how to make it possible for Puerto Ricans to stay on the island. Forget about status. The average Puerto Rican both obsesses and couldn’t care less about the island’s political status. Talk about the role of the welfare state in Puerto Rico, how to develop jobs (with realistic promises -and not more tax incentives- instead of platitudes), address how the Fiscal Control Board has failed in developing strategies to lessen corruption or fix infrastructure.