Why the 2024 Chicago convention is not the 1968 convention

Democrats plan to convene in Chicago next week to celebrate as their presidential candidate a sitting vice-president who did not win a single primary vote. The candidate, a former senator, has a good record on civil rights but is tied to the White House’s support for an unpopular war. Kamala Harris may be no Hubert Humphrey, but the parallels with the Democrats’ calamitous Chicago convention of 1968 have sharpened since she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. Party insiders ordained her, as they did Humphrey to replace Lyndon Johnson, and like Humphrey she has yet to distance herself from the president’s handling of a war that has infuriated her party’s left.

One could play this game for quite a while. As the Democrats head to Chicago, the echoes of the late 1960s can be deafening. In the foreground are protest organisers wrangling with Chicago’s mayor over permits for what they say will be marches by tens of thousands; in the background is a society convulsed over arguments about academic freedom, free speech, race and income inequality, over surveillance and conspiracy theories and predictions of a cybernetic revolution that could make humans irrelevant, over fears of political violence and a fraying of law and order.

“The hottest idea was that a mood of radical helplessness was blanketing the land—America was suffering an epidemic of ‘alienation’, ” writes Rick Perlstein in “Nixonland”, his study of the forces that led to the rise of Richard Nixon, who won the presidency in 1968. In 1966 the Harris polling organisation invented an “alienation index” that averaged rates of agreement with five statements such as “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” and “The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you”. All this anxiety and frustration was helpful to a Republican nominee seeking to motivate the white working class—the “forgotten” Americans, Nixon called them then, as Donald Trump does now—and to a third-party candidate, George Wallace, who wanted to divide Democrats.

Drawing such parallels is useful, but more for the reminder of how long such forces and tactics have shaped American politics than for any indication of a probable result. (Even the outcome in 1968 was not so obvious as it is often seen in retrospect: Humphrey lost the popular vote by less than a percentage point.) The war in Gaza presents a political challenge for Ms Harris but nothing like the burden Humphrey carried in 1968, the deadliest year of the Vietnam war for American forces, when half a million American troops were in place and the draft stalked a generation.

For the organisers of the protests next week, the elevation of Ms Harris has made no difference. “Let’s be honest,” says Hatem Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the Democratic National Convention. “Kamala Harris is not a progressive.” Since before Ms Harris became the nominee she has tried to offer tonal comfort to anti-war Democrats, but she has not deviated from the administration’s policy. “None of us from the community are just willing to listen to her paying lip service” to the plight of Palestinians, Mr Abudayyeh says. He wants an arms embargo and a halt of other aid to Israel if it does not stop the war.

In 1968 the protesters in Chicago had many allies inside the convention hall intent on writing the platform and nominating an anti-war candidate, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. During the convention, on August 28th, the Democrats held a televised debate over their position on Vietnam. That night, police attacked protesters in Grant Park, outside the hotel where many delegates were staying. “It’s incredible, like a Bruegel,” McCarthy said, as he watched from his window.

Mr Abudayyeh is optimistic there will be no violence this time. But he is even more certain the Democrats will not accommodate protesters’ demands. The protesters have far fewer allies in the hall—perhaps 30 “uncommitted” delegates out of more than 4,600. The platform is already written. The draft, released before Mr Biden dropped out, describes Democrats’ support for Israel as “ironclad” and calls for defeating Hamas, as well as a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages.

The alienated American

The divide in the party over Israel is deep, but the anti-Israel left is on the defensive. Two Democratic members of Congress who accused Israel of genocide in Gaza lost their primaries this summer, in part because a pro-Israel group spent a combined $25m on ads to defeat them. Both were vulnerable to accusations that they neglected their constituents’ real interests. That very vulnerability underscores that the war in Gaza does not matter as much as other issues to most Democrats, let alone to most Americans, who feel very alienated these days, according to the Harris Poll. Its index stood at 66 last year, compared with 36 in 1968.

Cannier leftists, while demanding an end to the war, have calibrated their positions with care. The Democratic Socialists of America recently withdrew its endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, accusing her of doing too little to help Palestinians and of a “deep betrayal” because she joined in an event to combat antisemitism.  Ms Ocasio-Cortez appears to have concluded that to achieve outcomes one must win elections. She was a stalwart supporter of Mr Biden until he dropped out, and is now of Ms Harris.

Before the election, Humphrey moved away from Johnson on Vietnam. But for Ms Harris the political risk of breaking with Mr Biden over Gaza is greater than that of sticking with him. Not only might she anger Democrats feeling renewed appreciation for the president, she would lend credence to Mr Trump’s claims that she is in thrall to her party’s left. One might also hope she actually believes that the policy she has been defending is the right one. ■

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