Echoes of 1968 and the Cycles of American History; Examining Chicago’s Role in U.S. Presidential Politics

By Jacob Margolies / Yomiuri Shimbun New York Bureau

8:13 JST, August 18, 2024

This “Letter from Chicago” is a special edition of the “Letter from New York” column by Jacob Margolies, The Yomiuri Shimbun’s General Counsel for America. With the Democratic Party gathering to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as its presidential candidate, the author, who is in Chicago to cover the convention, looks at the city’s role in U.S. presidential politics and the lessons of history.

Here we are again in Chicago with America at a crossroads.

Over the course of the history of the United States, there is no city more entwined with the Democratic Party’s aspirations and presidential politics.

In the 20th century, Chicago was where the Democrats nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, 1940 and 1944. Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, was with Roosevelt on Feb. 15, 1933, when an assassin’s bullet intended for the president-elect missed and hit the mayor. Cermak died from his wounds 19 days later.

Chicago is the city where the Democrats gathered in 1952 and again in 1956 to nominate Adlai Stevenson in his unsuccessful campaigns against President Dwight Eisenhower. And in 1996, it was the city where President Bill Clinton was renominated at the United Center, the same site where Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to accept the party’s nomination.

But it is the parallels and distinctions between this year and the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 that are particularly compelling. If what’s past is prologue, a line taken from Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest,” the tumultuous events of 1968 and the presidential politics of that year deserve special attention.

President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek a second term was the first time an incumbent president surrendered the chance to seek reelection this century. But in 1968 President Lyndon Johnson, suffering from low popularity, unlikely to win a full second term and in poor health, declared in a televised address that he would not seek his party’s nomination. Like Biden, who in July decided he would not run for reelection and announced his support for Harris, Johnson convinced Democratic party leaders and delegates to support his vice president, Hubert Humphrey.

During the convention of 1968, a series of street protests — mostly involving young people against the Vietnam War — descended into violence, and battles between police and those demonstrating were broadcast on television around the world.

This year, thousands of young Americans protesting against the United States’ support for Israel and calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza are in Chicago and, once again, there will almost certainly be many arrested.

There are, however, significant differences in the intensity and atmosphere of the protests in 2024 compared to 1968.

In 1968, the United States was a direct participant in the war in Vietnam. Tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese had already been killed.

While today the United States has a volunteer army, in 1968, there was a military draft, and the antagonism between protesters and those supporting American troops fighting overseas was intense. Whatever outrage some Americans feel over the civilian deaths in Gaza, young voters ranked Israel-Palestine at the bottom of a long list of issues they care about in a recent opinion survey conducted by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Protesters in 2024 will also likely encounter a more accommodating police force than was the case in 1968. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is a progressive who earlier this year broke a 23-23 tie vote in the Chicago City Council by voting “yes” on a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

During the months prior to the convention in 1968, the United States had seen political assassinations of Sen. Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. After King’s death in April, there were riots in many American cities. In Chicago, over a three-day period of unrest, 11 people died, more than 100 were injured and over 2,000 were arrested. Richard Daley, the city’s longtime mayor, was determined to maintain order during the convention, and the city’s police brutally attacked protesters who didn’t comply with the law.

So, the demonstrations and the reaction to the protests by authorities in 2024 are likely to be far less charged than was the case in 1968.

Another major difference from 1968 is that in 2024, the Democrats have united enthusiastically behind Harris. In 1968 delegates at the convention were divided. Humphrey was associated with President Johnson, and that made him the pro-war candidate in the eyes of those seeking an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Fierce confrontations took place on the convention floor, and hundreds of delegates chanted “Stop the War.” After the party platform proposed by Humphrey was adopted, anti-war delegates marched around the convention hall singing, “We Shall Overcome.”

Sen. Eugene McCarthy, the leading anti-war candidate and the winner of several primaries in the run-up to the convention, refused to endorse Humphrey until late October. A few days later, Humphrey would lose the general election to Richard Nixon.

There is, however, another historical echo to today’s national politics that is particularly salient to the coming months and it, too, has a Chicago connection. In 2020, Trump, after losing to Biden, refused to concede, claiming, without evidence, that the election had been rigged by Democratic political organizations that control big cities. Once again, in 2024, Trump is already casting doubt on the legitimacy of this year’s election in the event he doesn’t win.

In the 1960 presidential race, John F. Kennedy won a very close race against the sitting vice president, Nixon. A few thousand votes in a handful of states would have resulted in Nixon being elected president. In Illinois, the margin was only 9,000 votes.

Leading Republican elected officials and prominent journalists claimed that Daley’s operatives engaged in voter fraud in Chicago precincts to allow Kennedy to carry the state. GOP officials filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in federal court challenging the results, and a grand jury was also empaneled to investigate possible criminal corruption.

Unlike Trump, however, Nixon publicly conceded the election two days after the voting took place. Republican Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen, campaign manager Len Hall and longtime adviser Bryce Harlow all pleaded with Nixon to challenge the results. But Harlow later told a reporter that Nixon had replied, “It’d tear the country to pieces. You can’t do that.”

Speaking in Los Angeles to his disappointed supporters, Nixon said, “One of the great features of America is that we have political contests that are very hard fought, as this one was hard fought, and once the decision is made, we unite behind the man who is elected.”

When it comes to recognizing the results of what promises to be another hard-fought election, one can only hope that the candidates and their followers heed Nixon’s advice and recognize the legitimacy of the result this November.