Remember the riots, results of the 1968 Democratic

National Convention? The "liberal wing" of the party was fed up with the Vietnam War and the war policies of a president who lied us into an escalation of that war. Can you say, "Gulf of Tonkin?" It never happened.

Bobby Kennedy, had he not been assassinated, no doubt would have won that nomination. Instead, the party nominated the Vice-president of the man who told the world that we had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The party was split right down the middle, and the atmosphere of the Convention was "electric" to say the least. Everyone wanted to bring the war to an end, but there was no agreement on the most important question. How?

The peace wing of the party--the liberals, also known as the party's base--were mad as hell, and they weren't going to take it anymore. "Getting along" to get their candidate elected didn't matter any more to the liberals. Our children were dying in a war that should never have been waged---a war based on a lie. All that mattered was bringing the war to an end.

There were protests in the streets of Chicago, the site of the Convention. There were protests inside the convention hall. Tempers flared. The promise of Mayor Daley, the Democratic Mayor of Chicago, that "law and order would prevail," in the city during the convention fell on deaf ears.

In the Convention at the Amphitheatre, the peace plank proposed for the Democratic party platform is voted down. Outside, news of the defeat of the peace plank is heard on radios. All hell breaks loose. For those my age and older, you remember what happened. For those younger, perhaps you've heard. If not, it would be a good thing for you to do some reasearch.

Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination on the first ballot. Richard Nixon won the election that fall in a landslide. The war in Vietnam would rage on for another four years. The last American troops left seven years after the 1968 Convention.

We are left to wonder what might have been had Sirhan Sirhan's bullet not found its target. Bobby Kennedy, who had broken with LBJ over the war, forcing the President's decision to withdraw from the race, was dead. And, with him died the best hope the country had in bringing the Vietnam War to a swift end.

------------------------

Forty years after the 1968 Democratic Convention, in 2008, the United States will still be engaged in another war started on the lies of a U.S. President and his, this time, Republican administration. Again, just about everyone in the Democratic Party wants to bring this war to a swift end. The problem is, there is no consensus on the most important question. How?

Many in the party believe that only the swift impeachment and removal from office of the POTUS, VP, and Attorney General of the US, a fate they certainly deserve, will bring the illegal war to an end. Many of those are deciding whether or not they can support a candidate who opposes impeachment. Others in the party believe that impeachment, however much deserved it is, will doom the chances of the Democratic nominee, and such a move will ensure another four years of "stay the course." And, of course, there are the moderates who keep saying, "Please, can't we all just get along?"

A year from next month, on the 25th of August, 2008, what looks to be an increasingly divided Democratic Party will hold its convention to nominate its candidate for the November election.

The liberal/progressive wing of the party is mad as hell, and it looks like they (we) aren't going to take it anymore.

The Convention is in Denver this time around.

But, it feels more and more like Chicago every day.

Denver, watch out!

----------------

they do not have to become citizen soldiers and take to the streets.

Too many have died, and too many are still looking the other way.

Bobby Kennedy would have changed the world.

is there anyone now.....who can.......or more importantly.......will????

the citizen soldier. But, when those citizens take to the streets and the halls of congress...well, you know.

I for one do not believe for a minute that the 2008 November elections will be a cake walk. The leadership better start paying attention to the base.

to dry.....

Why? Because she was smart enough to go where she will be heard. And the problem with Cindy is not her.......but those who analyze, who debate, who criticize, and distance themselves from the realization that the only thing that will save more from dying in Iraq, is for us to take to the streets.

it seems the society has become too civilized.

:)

how far we have come....let's say......December 1st.

You will still be typing real well.......and I will still be crying.

type.

:hi:

I think the vote was closer than you mention. Sen. Eugene McCarthy deserves much credit for bringing out the anti-war message. 1968 may have been the worst year in my historic lifetime.

And today seems so familiar.

but, 301 to 191 electoral votes really isn't that close. Of course, the popular vote was much closer...within a percent or two.

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1968&f=0

Nixon-Agnew received 31,783,783 in popular votes or 43.42%. Humphrey-Muskie received 31,271,839 in popular votes or 42.72%. Wallace-LeMay received 9,901,118 or 13.53%.

I remember my Dad, a Democratic precinct captain in Chicago, coming home at 7:00 am the morning after the election, totally disappointed, saying "if we only had two more days, that bastard Nixon wouldn't have won."

Daddy was a Nixon hater from way back. He never forgave him for the awful campaign he ran against Helen Douglas for the Senate seat in California.

As I remember, it really was and was probably a bit crooked too
The Blue Dog machine fought tooth and nail to keep their power and go with Hubert

Hubert Humphrey was the wrong candidate at the wrong time
Kinda like Kerry
It should have been McCarthy
It should have been Dean

When the opponent is as crooked and ruthless as Nixon or as Bush
We don't need a candidate that minces words, pulls punches and gives up too easy.
I've never been so angry as the morning after when Kerry conceded
except maybe in 1968

For one thing the Republicans have held the White House. So that has the tendency to render us and our base a bit more humble than we normally would be.

For another the convention no longer determines who the Candidate will be, in the way it once did. The candidate will be selected long before the convention.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

A very detailed account of the Chicago convention therein. The result of "riot in the streets" is history, but I think we should also realize that at that time we still had a draft and a lot of people on the barricades were guys who didn't want to be involuntary drafted into the Vietnam War. Once the draft was ended a few years later, the anti-war machine lost steam. I know, I worked in it.

The antiwar movement today is nothing like the one I remember then. So I don't know if history is going to repeat itself. Hubert Humphrey was a sad case and in a very bad situation. He had been a true liberal that was completely undone by becoming LBJ's running mate. LBJ became so hated he couldn't even get out of the White House since the crowds hating him became so big and noisy.

You add to this the fact that the Democratic Party lost a major part of its base with the revolt of Southern segregationists. LBJ did the right thing but even he knew what his stand on civil rights would result in.

2008 will be a watershed election but not like 1968, IMHO.

here is a piece of history little known,


October surprise of 1968

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/111300a.html

From:

November 13, 2000

Who Should Concede?
The Secret History of Modern U.S. Politics
By Robert Parry

<snip>
The Vietnam War was raging and was creating deep divisions within the Democratic Party. In October 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was maneuvering to achieve the framework for a peace settlement with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong through negotiations in Paris.

At the time, 500,000 American soldiers were in the war zone, and civil strife was tearing the United States apart. Nixon feared that a pre-election peace agreement could catapult Humphrey to victory.

According to now overwhelming evidence, the Nixon campaign dispatched Anna Chenault, an anti-communist Chinese leader, to carry messages to the South Vietnamese government of Nguyen van Thieu. The messages advised Thieu that a Nixon presidency would give him a more favorable result.

Journalist Seymour Hersh described the initiative sketchily in his biography of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. Hersh reported that U.S. intelligence “agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between between Nixon and his people and President Thieu in Saigon. … The idea was to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress.”

In her own autobiography, The Education of Anna, Chennault acknowledged that she was the courier. She quoted Nixon aide John Mitchell as calling her a few days before the 1968 election and telling her: “I’m speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It’s very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our Republican position and I hope you made that clear to them.”

Reporter Daniel Schorr added fresh details in The Washington Post’s Outlook section . Schorr cited decoded cables that U.S. intelligence had intercepted from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.

<snip>

in the Conyers threads, but I figured that would upset people.

But you are right, we are getting there, might be Denver could get interesting.

This is why I believe it would be best to support a candidate who was opposed to the debacle in the first place. We also have the issue of climate crisis looming so why not choose a leader who has done more for that issue than anyone else?

RUN AL RUN!

although he needs PROTECTION from the forces who assassinated so many leaders in the 60's.

young men (who couldn't vote; the vote was extended to 18 year olds later) who could be drafted against their will into the war and their families. There were real life or death situations. I was "Another Mother for Peace" then. I had a son who was very young at the time but I feared a lengthy war that might eventually take him. I remember how bitter some liberals who supported Eugene McCarthy early on felt about Bobby Kennedy getting into the race. They called him a lot of names and saw him throwing his family fame and fortune up against their hero, McCarthy. Bobby wasn't "liberal enough." He was an opportunist for moving to New York just to run for the Senate (remind you of anyone?).

I think if Al Gore had really wanted to run there would be some evidence of it at this point. And Al knows this, having run for President before. It would literally take all of his time and he would have to have a vast machine of workers (paid and volunteer) being his "boots on the ground."

Assasination is always a lurking fear in my mind, too, but I fear it more for Obama and to some extent for Hillary. Power in the hands of anybody but white males (altho Gore would be apostate enough) has always brought out some crazies...

I don't know if any site could equal it today, but that isn't necessarily due to the complacency of our youth (or adults for that matter . . . I'm 60 and have not been at another demonstration).

There might be many factors affecting the entire culture (e.g., less Romanticism, no draft, no blanketing one's youth with the cold war) which makes this a different situation. That is, we might not see another Chicago, for good or ill. But that doesn't mean that there aren't just as many conscientious and committed youth as before.

I teach them every day and am often amazed at the intelligence and humanity of a decent percentage, maybe 5-8%. I don't think the 1960s had a higher percentage of real radicals and committed liberals and progressives. I mean, the type that would go to Chicago.

(By the way, I hiked in from Bowling Green Ohio and worked for Mobilization, Housing until I was swept up like so many others.)

I was 8 years old. On my eighth birthday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. His assassination, Bobby Kennedy's assassination and the riots in the streets and on college campuses are seared into my memory.

As an 8 year old caucasion with liberal parents, (in the south, TN, nonetheless) I could not understand why police officers were beating up on people for doing nothing but sitting down where they were told not to sit.

I think, perhaps, the draft being ended is one reason we don't see riots, and the other is that if we don't want to watch the news of the war, we can just change channels. When we were coming along, there were only 3 networks, and they all had news on at the same time...and, people read newspapers, etc.

Out of sight, out of mind. I don't know what it's going to take, but I think that we are just about to get there.

...I'm not dead...

T.h.o.m.p.s.o.n....but, it will be Nixon that he'll be channeling, if he's elected.

There was plenty of divisiveness in all of those conventions, but there is a difference from 2008.

First, while we do have the DLC, in '68 there were still many Dixiecrats still in the party and many were war hawks. Then there were other fights going on...like between Jesse Jackson & Richard J. Daley for control of the Illinois delegation and lots of other fights...wounds that would linger until Clinton came along.

The Democrats in 2008 are a far more cohesive and unified party than the one in '68...and for the exact opposite reason they splintered in that election...the war. There are few, if any Democrats, who still support this occupation and there's a strong chance even more anti-war, Progressive Democrats will be elected next year. Even in our darkest hour, I honesty believe we are on the threshold of a new Progessive era...the pendulum has swung in our direction.

But, the impeachment question might just end the "cohesiveness."

A year ago, Feingold couldn't even get a censure motion read. He was ridiculed in the corporate media. The Murtha withdrawl plan...the same that passed easily through the House last month, again...was poison-pilled by Hastert and lost overwhelmingly. Things have change a lot since then.

I tend to think our disagreements about impeachment is more on the method rather than the need. It's more strategic than fundamental differences as we all want this regime out and the Iraq mess ended, it's just how we go about it that we differ. Time, I expect, will change the sceanrio again. Ongoing losses, the increasing unpopularity of this war for profit and the '08 elections will present new opportunities as long as we remain true to two main objectives...ending the Iraq mess and getting Democrats elected next year so that the real investigations and accountability can occur.

Cheers...

The day started out peaceful enough. It was a nice day with a music festival in the park but the permit to stay in the park past 10pm was denied so at 10pm the police came in and thousands were forced into the streets. The police were out in force by that time and then the National Guard practically materialized out of nowhere.

It got violent and all of this went out on national television. The crowd chanted "The whole world is watching." It was pretty wild.
For all of the compaints about police brutality I think it was amazing no one was killed.

Violence in the streets that night did not end the war. For the most part, quiet middle America, even though they may have been sick of Vietnam weren't particularly comfortable with all the violence and talk of "revolution." I think there was probably some backlash that helped Nixon get elected.

Violence will not win any fence sitters over to our side. I really hope nothing gets out of hand in Denver or we can look forward to another Republican administration.

Mz Pip
:dem:

but, a lot of Democrats are pretty much pissed off right now. I'm one of them. And, I won't be voting for the Dixiecrat, Jim Marshall, who is my DINO Representative in Congress...he's a Lieberman wannabe.

is Barbara Lee so I don't have to even consider sitting out that one.

One thing that has changed since th 60s is that the candidate is no longer chosen behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms. So we'll have our candidate way before the election so that uncertainty won't be ratcheting up the tension.

Though, those smoke filled rooms did give us some great leaders. I certainly don't think we should go back to that but it wasn't an all bad system.

Mz Pip
:dem:

unless something drastic happens in the next few months (which of course it might). I just don't see that as being an important issue for MOST of the rest of America, and the progressive wing, for good or for bad, right or for wrong, does not run the Democratic Party.

impeachment, it's a cinch that there won't be an "impeachment platform," or even a "plank."

I just hope that, by that time, it's not too late for the country to regain our freedom, and our reputation around the world.

Or, my distrust was confirmed. I saw "good Democrats" cheer on the cops and make excuses for their support of Humpty Dumpty and the war. It was my first vote for president and the first time I voted against the party I belong to.

I was 12 in August of 1968.
I saw the riot from the back of an Impala convertible.

I have had trouble with authority ever since.

Maybe this time our progressive candidate will not get shot.

All those shiny new emergency powers just waiting to be used.
All he needs is an incident.
We're assuming a false-flag terra attack,
but a riot would do.

While I was fuming about the dem's unwillingness to impeach... it occured to me that it's has the same flavor about it as back in '67-'68

I thought to myself - if this continues, will we have riots at the conventions like we did in '68?

:kick: & Recommended!

We need todays Keyboard Commando's to get up from their desks and take to the streets!

I'm so sick of the naysayers and do-nothings and hand wringers!

Take Your Country Back, Damn It!! :grr: Stand Up and Fight!!

the ones who don't have hip replacements. I would be very surprised to see a youth uprising in Denver--there are hardly any Dem activists under the age of 50 here.

I'd like to see it--it would just surprise me. Ask Will Pitt what the Democratic Party looks like in Colorado. We are on life support. \

Help!

planes now! Busses too and cars! :P

I don't need a walker. ;)

being drafted into a war against their will, and no recourse to voting because the voting age is still 21 (as it was in 1968)! Believe me, that had a lot to do with "riots in the streets" back in the antiwar day.

and I'm not in a hurry to bring anby of that back, even if it might get us in the streets.