For me, this week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago means returning to the scene of the crime. To be sure, the crime was not anything committed by me, the protesters, or even, above all, the Chicago cops who were running amok in what a state commission later described as a “police riot.” Rather, it was the Vietnam War and what it did, not just to the nation, let alone Vietnam itself, but that week in Chicago, to a fragmented America and, some might say, a half-certain but nonetheless essential instrument of social democracy: the Democratic Party.
I don't mean to exonerate Mayor Daley's goons like that, especially since one of them hit me with his nightstick. This did not even happen during the demonstration. On the last night of the convention, a full 24 hours after cops cleared the Grant Park area for protesters, I and people like me — the rest of Senator Eugene McCarthy's anti-war presidential campaign staff — were saying goodbye to each other on the 15th. Floor of the Conrad Hilton, the hotel where candidates and convention staff are headquartered. (I was 18 at the time, but since I graduated high school in January and didn't start college until September, I spent the intervening months working on the McCarthy campaign.) About three o'clock in the morning, while we were sitting in the halls softly singing some sad farewell songs, fully armed policemen came out of the elevators, and claimed that someone in the hotel had dropped something near some policemen on the platform below, and they used their batons to push us into the elevators and thus down. To the basement. lobby. My take on this was: (1) they ran out of people to beat up in the streets, making this a pure police riot, or (2) the hotel had a 3am checkout deadline that they enforced like nobody's business.
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As much as we remember Chicago in 1968 today, the main reason for that was the disturbances that took place outside the convention hall, while the proceedings inside the hall were going on, impervious to the disturbances outside its doors – that is to say, everywhere in the country where Americans were disturbed by our politics. The war in Vietnam. However, in reality, the inside of the hall was just as divided and angry as the outside. On Tuesday night, there was a bitter and emotional fight over the party's support for the war. The anti-war forces were led by San Francisco Rep. Phil Burton, then the most effective left-wing liberal in Congress, and who would later provide Nancy Pelosi with her entrée into California politics.
Nearly a third of delegates voted for an alternative clause calling for US withdrawal, an impressive total considering that most delegates were chosen by party leaders. The only states to have contested primaries that year were New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Indiana, Oregon, and California. (Hubert Humphrey, the eventual nominee, did not appear on the ballot for any of them in particular.) It was the subsequent backlash against such popularly unrepresentative conventions that led to widespread primaries and caucuses just four years later.
As a courier between McCarthy's hotel headquarters and his delegates inside the hall, I can attest that the convention hall was buzzing with the anger that the two camps of delegates had toward each other. This became clear to those watching television when Connecticut Senator Abby Ribicoff endorsed the presidential nomination of anti-war candidate George McGovern (whom supporters of Robert Kennedy had supported after Kennedy's assassination) on the third night of the convention, while the television was showing split-screen images of the convention proceedings and the riots that Conducted by police in Grant Park. “If George McGovern had been president, we wouldn't have these Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago,” Ribicoff said. Then, an inspired TV news director immediately cut to a shot of Chicago Mayor Daley, sitting in the front row of delegates, shouting the easily readable phrase: “Fuck you!” to Ribicoff, followed by some classic anti-Semitic expletives. But to appreciate how deep and wide these divisions were even within the party elite gathered in the hall, you had to be there.
Although the Gaza war is of great importance to some, it ranks far below the state of the economy, food and housing costs, abortion rights, immigration, crime, and the future of American democracy among the general public's concerns.
Such internal divisions will not be evident at this week's conference. Democrats are united in their relief that President Biden is stepping down and in unexpected joy that Vice President Harris has so far been so convincing a candidate that she has risen in the polls and even managed to change the Democratic and national zeitgeist for the better. Really, who knew?
There is a basis for this unity, obscured by Biden's inability to defend his record and his unpopularity in return: that his policies and those of his party are broadly popular. Affordable childcare and college? Paid family and medical leave? Promoting long-neglected local manufacturing and making it environmentally friendly? Support workers and unions? Limit price setting and the monopolies that support it? Are we paying for all of this with higher taxes on the rich and corporations? What's not to like?
When these policies were polled on their own, rather than linked to the dreaded word “pedium economics,” they were found to be very popular among the public and to enjoy overwhelming support among Democratic elected officials and party elites—except on a few select party issues. Wall Street and big-money donors. Fortunately, Harris' rise has unleashed a flood of contributions from small donors, reducing the need to rely on deep-pocketed people.
It is also fortunate that Harris's initial speech on economic policies, which he delivered last Friday in North Carolina, doubled down on the importance of many of these policies, especially with regard to reducing the power of companies that dominate the market and have boosted their profit margins at the expense of American consumers. .
Despite ongoing anger over Israel's war on the Palestinians (not just in Gaza but also with increasing frequency in the West Bank), anger over the Biden administration's continued military aid to Israel is in no way comparable to anger over the Johnson administration's war. In and Vietnam. While the number of Palestinian civilian deaths in the Gaza war was horrific, the war in Vietnam was on its way to claiming the lives of nearly 60,000 Americans and between two and three million Vietnamese. Until the last year of the war, the draft loomed over an entire generation of young Americans, even as the war's supposed goals became less achievable and more ambiguous. By the time the Chicago Conference was held, the war had dominated the American consciousness. In contrast, the Gaza war, although extremely important to some, does not affect Americans' thoughts. In opinion polls, it ranks far below the state of the economy, food and housing costs, abortion rights, immigration, crime, and the future of American democracy, among the concerns of the general public.
This doesn't mean there won't be angry demonstrations in Chicago this week. By all accounts, the Israeli government, dominated by ultra-nationalist settlers and religious misogynists, has waged an indiscriminate and bloody war against the Palestinians, and even the Biden administration's continued supply of offensive weapons was bound to lead to protests. However, in the age of social media where you only read what you like, it's all too easy to fall down the rabbit hole, and clearly some protesters did just that. The list of demands put forward by the groups coordinating the protests blames the Biden administration and the Democratic Party for not only continuing to support Israel's war and Israel's existence, but also blames Democrats for failing to “legalize the right to abortion” (which had the right to abortion). Overall Democratic support but failed to pass Congress due to overall Republican opposition), for failing to pass the pro-union PRO Act (see previous parentheses), and “to give corporations latitude (sic) to exploit their workers.”
This indictment is clearly more disruptive and fanciful than anything the protesters demanded in 1968, though some of them clearly were. Protesters' behavior may marginalize the protest; Regressing into the lies and delusions evident in indictments and lists of demands can marginalize protest as well. Inside the room this week, at least, there is no such prevailing anger.
But the fundamental difference between 1968 and 2024 is the difference between Richard Nixon and his party on the one hand, and Donald Trump and his party on the other hand. Nixon was resentful and paranoid at times, but he was a pillar of reason and restraint compared to Trump. Privately, we know from the tapes that Nixon was lashing out at minorities and trying to cover up a crime, but he did not pose the kind of threat to democracy that Trump does. He appointed the judge who would bring Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court; Trump appointed three judges who overturned him.
But under Nixon, there were no popular media networks happy to promote Big Lies (despite denying their Goebbels-like lineage) on the issue of far-right beliefs, especially xenophobia and white nationalism. By the time Donald Trump took office, a large percentage of the public was ripe for a leader who would make these issues his own and impose them on the nation, even if that meant scaling back democratic laws and norms. Attacking the Democrats as the main obstacle to a better world, as some and perhaps most of the protesters this week seem inclined to do, makes as much sense as the German Communists' strategy of attacking their rival left-wing party, the Social Democrats. As the main obstacle to a better world even when the Nazis were on the verge of coming to power. In the broadest sense, protesters this week will not recapitulate the mistakes of Chicago in 1968, but rather attempt to revive the mistakes of Berlin in 1933.
Fortunately, there is now a much greater level of left-center unity than in 1968 or 1933, as the conference itself and the shifts in public opinion polls should demonstrate. Let's hope it continues.
