Echoes of '68 as Chicago convention looms for Democrats

The 1968 Democratic National Convention marked an unprecedented confluence of political drama in Chicago, including a nominee replacing an incumbent president, Americans seething over a foreign war, and a cauldron of protest and violence. Sound familiar?

Next week's Democratic gathering, set to anoint Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's White House nominee, features multiple can't-make-this-up similarities to the convention that scarred US politics 56 years ago.

The coincidences are almost eerie.

Both conventions are set in Chicago, America's third most populous city.

President Joe Biden upended this year's Democratic campaign by exiting the race, much as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968, albeit for different reasons. Both were replaced on the ticket by their vice presidents.

The turbulence of the late 1960s was fueled by relentless anti-Vietnam war protests that sharply influenced the 1968 election, while today, Democrats are grappling with opposition to the Biden administration's policy on Gaza and Israel.

Protests -- and a brutal police crackdown, including hundreds of injuries and arrests -- rocked that year's convention, while thousands of demonstrators, many of them pro-Palestinian, will converge on Chicago next week, according to organizers.

While 1968 -- marred by assassinations, riots and chaos -- has been dubbed "The Year That Changed America," many are calling the 2024 election, with Donald Trump on the ballot, the most consequential of their lifetime.

NASA is discussing another Moon mission. Race relations are simmering. There's even a man named Robert F Kennedy running for president.

"It's not a twin, but an echo," David Farber, a University of Kansas history professor and author of the book "Chicago '68," said of circumstances connecting the two conventions.

He pointed to the choice of Chicago as a way for Democrats to exorcise the demons of the past.

"I thought, 'Oh, the ghost of '68 is really over' -- and then all the protests broke out on university campuses over the Gaza-Israel situation" and word came that massive demonstrations await the upcoming convention, Farber told AFP.

"I spoke too fast. That ghost has not been put to bed yet."

- 'Prepared' -

Acutely aware of Chicago's past, police superintendent Larry Snelling sought to assuage fears of a repeat, saying security will be tight.

"We're prepared," he told a forum Monday.

"You have the right to protest," Snelling said, while cautioning: "We will not allow people to come here and destroy this city."

Still, Farber predicted the specter of unrest has Team Harris worried: "Everybody who's involved in the campaign, I'm sure, is just holding their breath right now."

Nothing went according to plan in 1968. Johnson shocked Americans with his March withdrawal. Days later, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.

Unrest swept several cities including Chicago, leaving multiple areas in smoldering ruin. And by June, the new Democratic frontrunner Robert F. Kennedy was dead, shot after a Los Angeles campaign event.

As AFP reported from Chicago just before the 1968 convention opened on August 26, the Democratic Party "appears more divided than ever."

Following an intense battle between anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy and Johnson's vice president Hubert Humphrey, the latter emerged as the nominee -- and lost the election to Republican Richard Nixon.

Outside the convention, young men burned their draft cards. Protesters chanted: "The whole world is watching."

This year, pro-Palestinian students stormed US university campuses, clashing with police and chanting "Intifada!"

- 'Story of contrasts' -

Some experts insist the 1968/2024 parallels are overblown.

"It's more a story of contrasts," said historian Frank Kusch who wrote "Battleground Chicago," a book about the 1968 convention.

It "came on the heels of political assassinations and there were race riots for almost two full years prior," not to mention a "generational uprising over the war" in Vietnam, Kusch told AFP.

"There's really nothing that adequately compares with it today," he said.

And while 1968's shambolic gathering featured floor scuffles and bitter divisions, Harris rolls into Chicago commanding a unified party, swiftly securing support from 99 percent of Democratic delegates after Biden dropped out.

Farber said with the rise of the primary system in the 1970s, US political conventions have largely seen their power and salience fade.

"They truly only matter in a big way if something goes wrong," Farber said. "And that's, I think, what the Democrats are anxious about right now."