The man who led Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign fears that this year’s precedent could be not his team’s success but the party’s failure of 1968.
Veteran political consultant James Carville wrote in an op-ed for the Daily Mail that he is worried that this year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago could be a repeat of the violent one that occurred in the same city back then.
“Nearly six decades ago, delegates were gathered inside the International Amphitheatre in the Windy City to nominate Hubert Humphrey for president, but outside it was chaos,” Mr. Carville wrote.
“Ten thousand anti-Vietnam war demonstrators were met by more than two thousand police and National Guardsman … Tear gas was fired into the crowds. Officers indiscriminately beat protesters. Hundreds were sent to the hospital and even more were injured. Television cameras captured it all – communicating to Americans at home that the disorder that they feared was worse than it seemed,” he wrote.
The Ragin’ Cajun said there is much discontent in the U.S. today, noting that 100,000 voters in the Michigan Democratic primary cast ballots for “uncommitted” instead of President Biden, led by Arab Americans and college students “upset over the carnage in Gaza.”
“I’m not predicting that Chicago’s streets will again erupt into violence, but if tensions in the Democratic Party continue to build over the ongoing Israel-Gaza war – the discontented are going to seek an outlet value. And their numbers may be overwhelming,” Mr. Carville warned.
The chaos in Chicago has been cited as one reason why Humphrey lost the 1968 general election to the law-and-order platform of Republican Richard M. Nixon.
Mr. Carville also said there is one major issue voters are worried about, and he fears the fallout from that too.
“My other big concern, which I’ve been very vocal about, is President Biden’s age. The administration can potentially make the situation in the Middle East better by reining in the Israelis or sending more humanitarian aid into Gaza, but there’s no reducing the number of candles on the President’s birthday cake,” he wrote.
“I’ve been around for a long time and all of this together tells me that there are going to be some very unpredictable moments in this election. I don’t know exactly what they’re going to be. But I promise you, they’re coming. Perhaps, in Chicago,” he wrote.
“And,” he warned, “Democrats are running out of time to do something about it.”
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