COMMENTARY | One of the things that the Democratic Party fears in the upcoming election is the kind of chaos at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., as occurred at the convention in Chicago in 1968.
In order to foreclose demonstrations and perhaps worse due to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the city of Charlotte is moving to declare the sort of encampments that the occupier movement have erected in urban centers across the country as a public nuisance, according to New York Magazine. The ordinance will not technically be aimed at any one group, but it is designed to put a damper on any Occupy Wall Street action at next year's convention.
According to the Atlantic Wire, the Occupy Wall Street movement is planning actions at both the Democratic convention in Charlotte and the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. It is unknown at this time how large these protests will be, but the potential for embarrassment for the Democrats is far greater than for the Republicans. The GOP can dismiss the occupiers as extreme radicals. The Democrats, to a certain extent, have embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement, something that has already come back to haunt them.
CNN has a good retrospective about the riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The riots, which involved clashes between anti Vietnam War protestors and the Chicago Police, were played out on national television night after night, overshadowing the events taking place inside the convention hall. The air of chaos that settled over Chicago enraged many liberal Democrats who were in sympathy with the demonstrators. But it also likely caused a backlash among rank and file voters, leading to the election of the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon.
The nightmare facing the Democrats is that something similar may happen in Charlotte next year. The anxiety level of Americans is already high, mainly due to the bad economy. Add to that the spectacle of police clashing with occupier protestors, and many people may conclude that President Obama has lost control of the country he was elected to govern. The inevitable result would be the election of a Republican president in 2012.
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