On the Road to Chicago 2024: A Historical Perspective
On July 14, shortly before President Biden announced his intention to withdraw his candidacy and endorse VP Harris, Democrats Abroad's international officers held a webinar for members. They shared the process, laid out in the DA charter, and details of how our voices are carried to the DNC Convention. DAGR's Chair, Brady Kiesling was asked by global Chair McDivett-Pugh to 'put on his historian's cap' and set the tone.
We are honored to have been invited and pleased to share Brady's piece, which was read at the start of the program.
by Brady Kiesling, Chair, Democrats Abroad Greece
The Democratic Party is more united in this decade than it has ever been. Disagreement over Gaza currently divides us as a party, but not nearly as deeply as did the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War.
The 1968 Chicago Convention is a lesson we cannot afford to forget. President Lyndon Johnson bravely sacrificed his regional power base by making the Democrats the party of civil rights. His withdrawal brought a group of charismatic, talented candidates into the race. One was murdered. Another was too little-known, too northern and too liberal to be able to stop the losses in the southern states.
At that time, America’s intervention in Vietnam had roused a youthful constituency determined to punish President Johnson by attacking his designated successor, Hubert Humphrey. The bloodshed outside the Chicago convention center helped secure the election of Republican Richard Nixon - and four more bloody years in Vietnam. Nixon withdrew our forces only after his reelection in 1972, leaving him immune to the political cost. Let us here remember Donald Trump, who, with similar cowardice, broke his campaign promise to withdraw us from Afghanistan.
President Biden deserves respect for his political courage and for managing an incredibly diverse coalition of constituencies. Old regional divides, for example, are much less important inside the party.
We have paid a price for that unity, however. An uncompetitive 2024 primary process left a crucial task undone, which is to prove to voters the willpower, stamina, strength and poise of our chosen candidate during a year-long competitive marathon. This year’s process legitimized our candidate institutionally, but the broader electorate, influenced by the media, seems to want dominance displays that we have not yet provided.
Can we provide those displays with Biden or another candidate? Are such displays indeed indispensable? The UK and French elections showed us that, when left and center join forces to defeat the odious or discredited right, the right will lose. Trump’s character and Trump’s vision for America are indeed odious. He will be defeated if the broad coalition we represent focuses on defeating him. What we cannot afford is the common human instinct to punish our own for failing to live up to unrealistic expectations.