Will Democratic Convention Be 1968 All Over Again?
Unease grows over the possibility that pro-Hamas protests at Chicago could make the Battle of Grant Park look like a game of TiddlyWinks.
Itâs none too soon, it seems to us, to wonder whether President Bidenâs coronation at the Democratic National Convention at Chicago this summer will make the 1968 Vietnam protests look like a game of Tiddlywinks. The unease arises from the Democratsâ inability to rein in their anti-Israel faction, which has repaid the administrationâs capitulation to its demands with an increasing desire for confrontation. That could crest at the convention.
Even before the grass roots of Mr. Bidenâs party declared for Hamas, the convention looked to be a site of worry for the president. His age and infirmity have led many to hope for an open convention, where the old man would, like Cincinnatus, head for home rather than, in Mr. Bidenâs case, bumble through. Then there is Chicagoâs earned reputation as a hotbed of drugs, guns, crime, and Marxist misgovernance. Mayor Johnson is weak on crime.
Weâve observed that in choosing Chicago, Democrats selected the âpremier showcase of failed Democratic policiesâ and a city that hosted not only the free for all of 1968 but also the 1896 iteration, where William Jennings Bryan declared he would not be crucified on a cross of gold and then bow his head as the crowd as one chanted âDown with the hook-nosed Shylocks of Wall Street! Down with the Christ-killing gold bugs.â
Now Gaza looms over the Democratic jamboree set for the Windy City.* The protests are not just persistent. They are shot through with a lawlessness that could mar the whole nominating convention. The Times relates how in December âa congressmanâs holiday party devolved into chaos and a broken nose.â Even Mr. Biden, the Times allows, has been âheckled and drowned out by demonstrators objecting to his support for Israel.â
The convention in 1968 set a high bar for disaster. The journalist Hodding Carter wrote that the convention spotlighted âa party that had lost its mind.â The founder of the Youth International Party, known as âYippies,â Jerry Rubin, described his followers as âdirty, smelly, grimy, foul, loud, dope-crazed, hellbent and leather-jacketed. We were a public display of filth.â The Gaza crowd could make them look like Athenian democrats.
The potential for provocation is an open secret in Democratic circles. The pollster James Zogby, a well-connected partisan of the Palestinian Arabs, reckons that âwe could very well get a replay of â68 in Chicago, which is not going to be pretty.â He calls it a âdangerous environment.â Not the least because the âuncommittedâ faction â those Democrats who refused to vote for Mr. Biden on account of Gaza â will control at least 25 delegates.
It would be one thing if Mr. Biden had set himself against the rising tide of anti-Israel sentiment and could credibly present himself as a bulwark against it. Instead something like the opposite has happened. Mr. Biden has been rewarding its excesses â and, so far, at the expense of Israel. A convention that becomes an infomercial for intifada is unlikely to help the incumbent, whom the pro-Hamas faction calls âGenocide Joe.â
If a convention is a partyâs self-portrait, Mr. Biden could discover that his recent appeasement of pro-Hamas Democrats will likely beget nothing but more trouble, as anti-Israel zealots escalate their demands on policy. Mr. Bidenâs desperation for the Dearborn vote has only heightened his political risks. For a Democratic Party profile in courage, the president is left to look to his home state of Pennsylvania, to Senator Fetterman.
Wouldnât he make a keynote speaker for the party of Harry Truman. He put the Democrats in the van of support for Israel during its crucial early independence. Yet all the potential Truman-type stalwarts â Senator Schumer most abjectly â have fallen away. Mr. Fetterman has been left to pick up the pro-Israel standard. Will he get a moment in the limelight? Or will Democrats fear a riot if Mr. Fetterman gets a part on the podium?
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* So named by an editor of The New York Sun.