What a difference a week makes! Democrats who were whistling past the graveyard of the Nov. 5 presidential election now are singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” after President Joe Biden dropped out of contention, clearing the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to make a run for the White House against Republicans Donald Trump and JD Vance. A race that had looked like a probable win for Team Trump suddenly changed as the burgeoning Harris campaign raked in record cash contributions, and voter enthusiasm surged through a formerly moribund Democratic Party.
Election Day is less than three months away, and Democrats can’t afford to get cocky or complacent. Still, Biden’s exit and Harris’ dramatic entrance were just the boost of momentum that the party needed before its convention in Chicago begins on Aug. 19. The Windy City has been the scene of many political conventions since Abraham Lincoln was nominated there in 1860. The most infamous Chicago convention happened in the turbulent year of 1968, when Chicago cops beat and arrested antiwar protesters, journalists and bystanders on the city’s streets, a bloody street clash that a national commission later called “a police riot.”
In his book Miami and the Siege of Chicago, acclaimed author Norman Mailer described both the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968. Richard Nixon coasted through a choreographed convention, while Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey was scorned for his party’s support for the Vietnam War. At the 1968 GOP convention in Miami, Nixon called for “law and order,” while his running mate, Spiro Agnew, said, “We must take the offensive against criminal forces and rebuild respect for law.” The hapless Humphrey lost a close election, and the war raged on. Both Nixon and Agnew later left office in disgrace because of their own lawlessness.
This year in Chicago, Democrats are hoping for a festive, united and peaceful gathering, unlike the raucous convention week in 1968. When the Democrats returned to Chicago after an 28-year absence to renominate Bill Clinton for president in 1996, protests on the streets outside the convention hall were large and colorful, but nonviolent. Democrats have their fingers crossed that their convention in Chicago this year will be more like 1996 than 1968. They are hoping to put on a more uplifting show than the GOP’s convention coronation of Trump in Milwaukee, an angry event featuring TV wrestler Hulk Hogan and purported musician Kid Rock. That convention brought to mind what caustic columnist H. L. Mencken meant when he said, “There is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
Mencken (1880–1956) was an iconoclastic journalist called “the sage of Baltimore” for his writings in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. He covered every Democratic and Republican convention from 1904–1948, and he enjoyed his work. “A national political campaign is better than the best circus,” he wrote. He skewered politicians of both parties and decried voters “who want security, not liberty.” During his lifetime and today, Mencken was called a racist, a sexist, an anti-semite, a misanthrope and a malcontent. He responded, “It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.”
One office holder here in Georgia stood for sensible, honest and decent politics as a progressive governor in the segregated South. Ellis Arnall (1907–1992), a graduate of the University of Georgia law school, was elected as this nation’s youngest governor in 1943. During his time in the Georgia State Capitol, Arnall spearheaded the drive to lower Georgia’s voting age to 18, nearly three decades before the rest of America did the same. Today Georgia voters of every age have until Oct. 7 to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election.
Gov. Arnall’s words of warning to voters still ring true as Donald Trump slouches toward Washington to be reborn: “The demagogue is a good showman… He knows the tricks of the ham actor, the gestures, the tones of voice that can arouse passions. Reading and writing are the two enemies he fears most.”
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