On the menu today: The new pier in Gaza is attached and finished; former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins says that the lab-leak theory is not a conspiracy theory; and preorders for the book continue nicely. But perhaps the most surprising development of the past 24 hours is a Democratic member of Congress floating the idea of his party simply not having a convention this year, in order to avoid 1968-style images of cops and protesters violently clashing in the streets. The convention is not going to be canceled, of course, but if this congressman is saying it, he’s probably not alone in wishing his party could just skip it.
‘It Would Be in the Best Interest of the Democratic Party to Forego the Convention This Year’
Minnesota Democratic representative Dean Phillips remains something of a footnote in the story of the 2024 presidential election. Phillips ran a little-noticed primary challenge against President Biden, won zero delegates — even Jason Palmer won three delegates, and no one’s heard of him! — and held an event in New Hampshire to which not a single voter showed up. (To give Phillips a little credit, more than half a million Americans have voted to make him the Democratic nominee for president so far.)
But Phillips is an interesting figure because he’s willing to say things that other Democrats are thinking but won’t say out loud, like that it’s impossible to envision Biden serving another full four-year term.
And last night on Fox News’ Special Report, Phillips asked a question that he’s probably not alone in wondering about: If everyone expects that the Democratic national convention in Chicago in August is going to be a disaster with violent protests marring the events . . . is it even worth it for Democrats to have a convention?
Bret Baier: Last thing, quickly, how much do you think the Israel-Hamas situation and the Biden administration’s policy, or talking about that, has affected numbers?
Dean Phillips: Let me start by saying, Bret, I think President Biden has done a very good job of supporting our ally and friend Israel. I think he made a misstep, of course, last week, withholding some arms shipments, but I’m very pleased with his support. Clearly, young progressives are dismayed and frankly, I think, now the president has kind of offended those on both sides of this issue. But he can recapture that. I do believe he is principled in his support for Israel. But I’m afraid this is looking awfully like 1968 with a lot of anger and angst and disenfranchisement that I think are going to play out on TV this summer, and it’s going to be awfully contentious.
Baier: 1968 was in Chicago, Democratic convention. You think it could look a little like that?
Phillips: I think it can, and frankly, I think it would be in the best interest of the Democratic Party to forego the convention this year and focus on campaigning. I don’t see any way it can be accretive to winning the next election.
Baier: Interesting. Congressman Dean Phillips, thank you for the time.
Phillips: Thank you, Bret.
“Forego the convention”? Canceling the convention now would represent an abject surrender to the forces of chaos, a de facto admission that the city of Chicago is now so ungovernable and unsafe, and the anti-Israel protesters are so menacing and violent, that not even the safety of the president of the United States can be guaranteed.
Donald Trump and the Republicans are running on the message that Joe Biden is too old, too exhausted, too indecisive, and too fearful of the hard Left to govern the country effectively. Canceling the convention would be the loudest possible announcement that the Republicans are correct in their assessment.
I can hear people asking, “What is the point of the national party conventions now that the nomination is sewn up months before in the primary process?” Well, besides the value in the major political parties getting everyone together once every four years, and the party rules that require a formal nomination process, they are a four-night informercial for the parties. And before you scoff, “No one is watching,” by the final night, with the president or presidential candidate speaking, a decent chunk of America is watching. Remember, the nominee’s address is broadcast simultaneously on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Univision, CNN, Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and CNBC.
Back in 2016, an estimated 30 million people tuned in to watch the final night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. A bit earlier, 32.2 million watched the final night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The audiences were down a bit for the “virtual” 2020 conventions, in the 23-24 million range, but . . . it was a weird environment with Covid.
Presidential candidates don’t get many opportunities to address audiences in the tens of millions. The only other comparable opportunity is the debates, and it’s entirely possible that the two debates — June 27 and September 10 — that Biden and Donald Trump agreed to yesterday will be the only debates we get. (More on that below.)
Our Chicago-based correspondent, Jeff Blehar, calls the upcoming Democratic National Convention “the most predictable civic disaster in recent memory.” He warns that unlike other cities hosting major-party conventions, Chicago is cursed with a mayor who has little interest in enforcing the law:
The reason Brandon Johnson acts like the police should or do not exist is because Brandon Johnson genuinely loathes them, and takes the side of protesters (or violent youth mobs, for that matter) reflexively. So many seem to have this default expectation that big-city mayors — particularly in Chicago, with its modern “Daley machine” tradition — will be “realist” in their orientation, so they can’t quite reckon with what they’re dealing with in Johnson. He is a true believer, all the way to wrack and ruin. He’d rather see the city burn than find himself on the wrong side of “the masses in the streets.” It’s his animating political impulse, beyond all else (including civic order). He is the final bloom of a long-germinating activist corpse flower, grown over an entire generation of radical inculcation. And he is our mayor.
As I warned back in April 2023:
A slim majority of Chicagoans decided the right man to face down these ongoing crises is Johnson, who said of “defund the police” during a 2020 radio interview, “I don’t look at it as a slogan. It’s an actual, real political goal.” More recently, Johnson said he would not promise to fill the police department’s growing number of vacant positions. “Spending more on policing per capita . . . has been a failure.”
But allow me to swim against the tide and wonder if the protesters will really be able to stir up chaos in the streets or disrupt the events inside the United Center.
I’ve covered every Democratic and GOP convention since the Republicans met in Philadelphia in 2000. There’s always a massive security presence — not just the city cops, but all kinds of federal agencies and often a small army of cops from neighboring jurisdictions. The city police and convention organizers study the experiences of previous conventions. There’s always a security perimeter with magnetometers and ID checks. Cops often assemble in riot gear as a show of force.
(Go figure, Democrats believe in high fences and protected gates when it comes to protecting themselves from outsiders with bad intentions, but not when it comes to protecting America.)
The 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland was supposed to be a disaster, and it passed with minimal incidents. It was a similar story for the Democrats in Philadelphia. The outrage over Trump was supposed to menace the GOP gathering, and Bernie Sanders supporters were supposed to overwhelm the convention nominating Hillary Clinton. There were big protests, no doubt, but nothing disrupted the events in any significant way.
Are the Chicago police undermanned? Yes — 11,591 officers, when they have the budget for about 12,700. But their backup includes “the Secret Service and FBI, Homeland Security, Emergency Management staff, Chicago fire, state police, sheriff’s deputies and local officers from surrounding police departments.” The Cook County Sheriff’s Office has more than 6,700 officers, deputies, and civilians. There is unlikely to be a lack of cops on the streets in the areas of the city where the delegates, media, and politicians will be staying.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago is extremely likely to go on as scheduled. And as much as we might disagree with Biden and the Democrats, let’s be thankful for that. What a terrible message of surrender a cancellation would send. Al-Qaeda and ISIS couldn’t get Americans to cancel their conventions, but snot-nosed punks on college campuses who love Hamas can do it?
Color me a little skeptical when you hear the lament, “This is going to be 1968 all over again.” It’s not just that there’s no Vietnam War and no draft, and that Johnson is about as far from Mayor Richard Daley as you can get. Police attitudes toward protesters are different than they were 56 years ago. Even the most vehemently anti-protester cop on the beat in Chicago doesn’t want to get caught on video beating the tar out of somebody with a nightstick.
(You know who really doesn’t want this year to be a rerun of 1968? Any presidential candidate named Robert F. Kennedy.)
Finally, if it is 1968, then the New York Jets are on their way to winning the Super Bowl. The last time they did that, they did it with a hot-shot, controversial, celebrity lightning-rod quarterback.
ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I think Joe Biden just hoodwinked Donald Trump into agreeing to the earliest and least-consequential debate schedule possible.