Vice President Kamala Harris is busy preparing for her presidential acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Soon enough many stories will be written and broadcast about how the Democrats once gave away a presidential election after a tumultuous convention in that same metropolis.
Like all important chapters in history, the Democrats’ implosion at their 1968 convention is worth studying. But it won’t be repeated. This time is different because Harris and her party know who the enemy is. That was not the case in ’68.
The Democratic convention was supposed to be a referendum on the war in Vietnam. Instead, the question of whether the U.S. government should continue sending soldiers to die in Southeast Asia was reduced to an afterthought.
