04 August 2008
Memories of 1968 Democratic Convention Resonate in 2008
Protest, alienation at Chicago meeting changed party’s nomination process
Washington -- As delegates prepare for the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver, the backdrop of an unpopular war and a closely contested presidential nominating contest reminds many political observers of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
That convention, marred by controversy and violent protests, changed the way the Democrats choose their presidential candidate.
The August 26-29, 1968, convention was the flashpoint for a generational clash, pitting the older Democratic Party leadership against the radical idealism of protesters still reeling from the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in April and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June. Kennedy’s anti-war, pro-civil rights campaign had mobilized many young and minority voters.
That was also the year of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive, which called into doubt U.S. military success in Vietnam, and the surprise decision by President Lyndon Johnson not to stand for re-election. It was also a time when the U.S. “baby boom” generation -- those born in the decade after World War II -- was entering adulthood and challenging traditions and institutions.
INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS
In 1968, convention delegates, mainly party activists chosen by party leaders and powerful organizations such as labor unions, bore little resemblance to the young protesters who gathered outside the conventional hall.
While delegates set the convention agenda and nominated then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had not run in any primary, the protesters outside voiced their displeasure with protests that varied from violent clashes with the police to comical displays of contempt for the U.S. political system.
Those events in Chicago “had both a haunting legacy and a very positive legacy,” Katherine Sibley, a professor at St. Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania, told America.gov.
“It was a time of a lot of anger and disillusionment on a lot of levels, the idealism that many brought into 1968, and this great disappointment with what happens,” she said. “That was sort of evident in the unhappiness of many of the radicals. But their anger and their radicalism and their violence also alienated many other people who, maybe before hadn’t paid much attention to them, and now were only paying negative attention to them.”
Complicating matters, Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, refused to grant permission for any protest. “There certainly was a sense … that the old guard, the old powers that be, should just have that power because they’re old and powerful,” Sibley said. By refusing to acknowledge the right of citizens to assemble and protest, Daley “was just guaranteeing trouble.”
One of highest-profile organizations participating in the protests, the Youth International Party (known as the “Yippies”), offered a boar they named “Pigasus” as their presidential nominee. It was comedy, Sibley said, but it was also an edgy political message.
“They were serious about the pig in some ways, even if they were being funny. They thought, ‘We’ve had it. We don’t trust these people. [And] we don’t trust the ‘pigs’” as they called police officers.
Yippie activists also proposed lacing Chicago’s water supply with LSD, a hallucinogen, to bring enlightenment to the populace, but, that offer was perceived as a threat. Sibley said that Democrat George McGovern’s defeat in the 1972 presidential election was, in a large part, a reaction by the so called “silent majority” to the excesses of the radicals.
CONVENTION PROCESS REFORM
It was McGovern who led the commission to reform the convention process after 1968. “[T]he whole mess there and the violence that went on just encouraged people that the process was flawed and [the need] to really open it up,” Sibley said.
To appease younger voters, a new delegate-selection process sought to “mirror more of the population as a whole,” with special attention to gender and race, to make the nominating process more open. After McGovern’s 1972 defeat, the Democratic Party saw the shortcomings of having its agenda set by the politically inexperienced and set aside one-quarter of the votes for “superdelegates” elected to political offices or already prominent in the political process.
In 2008, the role of these super delegates rose from relative obscurity to become a key factor in the campaign when Barack Obama held a narrow lead over Hillary Clinton in pledged delegate votes. Ultimately, enough superdelegates announced support for Obama to ensure him the nomination.
As in 1968, the Democratic Party of 2008 faces a generational and racial divide, with Obama drawing much of his support from younger voters and African Americans. Sibley said the memory of the 1968 convention likely weighed on the superdelegates, and they faced intense pressure to declare their support for one of the candidates before the primary season concluded to avoid a contentious floor fight in Denver.
“I think that there was a sense that the superdelegates, if they had gone for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama when the popular vote, even though it was close, was leaning the other way, would have really led to a sense of alienation,” she said, or even “added an element of illegitimacy” to Clinton’s candidacy. But, she said, it is always possible primary voters would not have given Obama the same level of support if superdelegates had declared themselves for Clinton regardless of the popular outcome.
“I think there’s more sensitivity now [on the part of the superdelegates]. If so many people are behind him, we can’t just sort of willy-nilly ignore that,” Sibley said.
Sibley plans to teach a seminar on the 1968 convention. “The election today is fascinating because of the connection to all the candidates to that period of time,” she said, adding that Senator Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton were once young Democratic Party activists and 1972 McGovern campaign volunteers. Republican and former prisoner of war John McCain also evokes memories of the Vietnam War, which cast a large shadow over the 1960s and early 1970s.
“Even if Obama was young then, his candidacy is certainly a product of the changes that came out of that period,” especially those brought about by the civil rights movement, she added.
