If the Yippies – a group of young activists known for political dissent – had their way, Americans would have elected a 145-pound pig named Pigasus as president in 1968.
The Yippies were famous for their unconventional tactics and were at the heart of the 1960s counterculture movement in the U.S. They demanded that Pigasus be treated as a legitimate candidate with Secret Service protection and foreign policy briefings.
Police arrested several Yippies for disorderly conduct after they paraded Pigasus outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Pigasus was taken into “protective custody” by police and eventually wound up at a farm.
Since the first Democratic National Convention in 1832, the event has had a long and storied history with headline-grabbing moments – some of which have left a mark in politics.
The Democratic Party will next converge at its convention in Chicago, Aug. 19-22, 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will officially accept their party’s nomination as the Democratic candidates for president and vice president.
As a scholar of the presidency, I think it is useful to remember that national political conventions often function like pep rallies, leading up to the big game of the general presidential election. These conventions can be places where new faces are launched, or they can be so dull that the country is functionally put to sleep. Here are a few of the more memorable moments to emerge from a Democratic National Convention.
The Yippies gather with a pig named Pigasus outside the Democratic National Convention in August 1968 in Chicago.
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In 1940, Eleanor Roosevelt became the first first lady to ever address the Democratic National Convention.
Democrats at the convention were divided over both the U.S.’s participation in World War II and the prospect of nominating Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR, as he was known, to a third term. No president had served more than two terms at this point. It was about a decade before the 22nd Amendment was ratified and became part of the Constitution, restricting presidents to two terms in office.
FDR was trying to break a two-term presidency tradition that started with George Washington.
Eleanor Roosevelt got up in front of the contentious and squabbling convention and said, “This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can do best for the country as a whole, and that responsibility rests on each and every one of us as individuals.”
Eleanor Roosevelt’s influential speech helped reframe the first lady as a powerful advocate for the president, without being simply a mouthpiece for him. Her depiction of 1940 as “no ordinary time” helped people accept that the country was facing an extraordinary moment in history that needed consistent leadership.
Roosevelt won another two terms and went on to serve as president until his death in 1945 during his fourth term.
Eleanor Roosevelt addresses the Democratic National Convention in July 1940, becoming the first first lady to speak during a national public convention.
Bettmann/Getty Images
Years later, when John F. Kennedy accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in 1960, he said that voters needed to choose “between national greatness and national decline.” Kennedy’s speech, known as the “New Frontier,” helped show voters that a Kennedy presidency could overcome problems with a forward-looking vision.
“Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy also called for a new America that was not weighed down by nostalgia.
Texas politician Ann Richards also supercharged her career with a Democratic National Convention keynote address in 1988. Her speech, funny and sharp, was also a commentary on the growing role of women in politics – and what an achievement it represented.
In her opening words, Richards talked about Fred Astaire, one of the most famous Hollywood movie stars in the 1930s, as well as Ginger Rogers, his co-star and dance partner.
“Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels,” Richards said.
Richards skewered the perception that Astaire was the bigger star by pointing out Rogers was every bit as capable and talented – and even did it in uncomfortable shoes.
At the time, Richards was the treasurer of Texas. But her witty speech propelled her into the national spotlight and helped her become governor of Texas in 1991.
In 2004, Barack Obama, then a 43-year-old Illinois state senator, launched himself on the national scene with his speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Obama gave a passionate speech paying tribute to his background, stating, “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”
And he offered a self-deprecating observation, saying the country embodied “the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!” These ideas of hope and unity later became key hallmarks of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama’s speech outshone the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, and helped position him as the party’s rising star. News commentator Chris Matthews noted after Obama’s speech, “We’ve just seen the first black president.”
Michelle Obama addresses the Democratic National Convention in August 2008.
Associated Press
Some speeches are so memorable, they are even recycled.
Michelle Obama, the wife of then-Sen. Barack Obama, memorably stressed the importance of dignity and hard work in her speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention – the convention at which her husband was formally nominated for president. Obama said that she and Barack were raised with the same values: “That you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”
Melania Trump heavily paraphrased this speech in her 2016 Republican National Committee speech. She, too, said that her parents raised her with values – “that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect.”
Trump’s speechwriter, Meredith McIver, took responsibility for the blunder, since she thought the draft speech shared with her contained Melania’s words. But in reality, Trump had given her Obama’s speech as an idea for what she wanted incorporated in her own speech.
I believe that national party conventions matter only for moments of mistake or magic. While these events are supposed to motivate voters and help reach out to the undecided, modern conventions more often are uninspired echo chambers of blather.
They do little to sway swing voters and only offer confirmation to voters already committed to their choice. Everyone in the audience is there to cheer and be energized by their home team.
Moments of greatness are far and few between at national conventions. But when lightning strikes, it can turn a phrase into an iconic moment that encapsulates an entire era.
Shannon Bow O'Brien, Associate Professor of Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The political earthquake that has made Kamala Harris the Democratic Party’s nominee for president is a San Francisco story that began more than 60 years ago.
Harris, whose first foray into electoral politics was in 2003 when she won a tough race for district attorney in San Francisco, and Nancy Pelosi, the longtime San Francisco congresswoman who was instrumental in persuading Joe Biden not to seek reelection, can both trace their political origins and their brand of liberal politics to the 1963 mayoral election in San Francisco.
The two major candidates in that race were the Republican, Harold Dobbs, and the Democrat, Jack Shelley. Shelley had served in Congress since 1949, had strong ties to organized labor and was seeking to become San Francisco’s first Democratic mayor in over half a century.
Dobbs was an affable businessman and one of the owners of a popular diner chain known as Mel’s Drive-In. In the days just before the election, there was a demonstration outside of a Mel’s Drive-In location in San Francisco because of the chain’s refusal to hire African Americans in customer-facing positions, such as waiters or waitresses. The young civil rights attorney who expertly organized that boycott and therefore helped deliver the election to Shelley was Willie Brown.
Shelley won the election, and that’s when the pieces started to fall into place that paved the way for, six decades later, Harris having the presidency within her reach.
In an early 1964 special election, California Assemblyman Phil Burton, from San Francisco, won Shelly’s old seat in Congress. That’s where Burton’s reputation for profanity, drinking and political genius would grow for almost 20 years. Whether it was redistricting, candidate recruitment, messaging or campaign strategy, Burton was a mastermind.
In 1960, his brother John introduced Phil to a handsome, young and progressive Italian American attorney who had been an all-city basketball player interested in getting into politics. Phil Burton recognized the young man’s potential and told him to run for the California Assembly in 1960, and that although he would inevitably lose, the name recognition and reputation he would gain would position him to run for the city’s Board of Supervisors, San Francisco’s equivalent of the city council, a few years later.
The plan worked brilliantly, as George Moscone was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1963, the state Senate in 1966, where he became majority leader in 1967 and eventually mayor of San Francisco in 1975.
Sen. George Moscone, right, roars with relief as he is congratulated by Congressman Phillip Burton on his close victory in San Francisco’s mayoral runoff, Dec. 12, 1975.
AP Photo/Jim Palmer
Burton was able to help place people like Moscone into powerful political positions because he could deliver organized labor, raise money and ensure redistricting that would draw friendly lines for his allies.
Shortly after Phil Burton got elected to Congress, Phil’s brother John won Phil’s old California Assembly seat in another special election. The Burton brothers then had enough power to put together a formidable political operation in San Francisco – one whose impact is playing out on the national stage today.
A generation of powerful Bay Area politicians, including former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, former U.S. Rep. George Miller, Moscone and others were part of the Burton political operation and benefited from its support.
In Congress, Phil Burton fought tirelessly for progressive causes. His most famous achievement may have been helping to create the 80,000-acre Golden Gate National Recreation Area that includes parts of Marin County and San Francisco.
The next thing the Burton brothers did after the 1963 election was to back Willie Brown in a Democratic primary later in 1964, in a different state Assembly district, against incumbent Democratic Assemblyman Ed Gaffney.
Brown won that primary and the subsequent general election and would hold onto that seat until he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1995. For the final 15 years he was in the Assembly, Brown was the speaker of that body, becoming what one California politics journal called “the most powerful Black politician in the country in the 1980s and ‘90s.”
Phil Burton would serve in the House of Representatives until his death in 1983, and come within one vote of becoming House Majority Leader in 1976. Upon Burton’s death, his seat in Congress was taken by his widow, Sala Burton, a Jewish woman who had fled Poland and made her way to San Francisco in the late 1930s.
Four years later, in 1987, Brown was at the height of his powers in Sacramento. He was able to send money to embattled Democratic incumbents to ensure his majority in the Assembly until the 1994 election – and stop the more extreme plans of Republican governors. John Burton, after spending a decade in the state Assembly and another decade in Congress, was out of office and addressing some personal problems. Sala Burton was dying of colon cancer.
It is a San Francisco legend that everybody in politics wanted to know who Sala Burton and her brother-in-law John wanted to run for her seat – which was still seen as Phil Burton’s seat – because whichever candidate had the support of the Burton political operation was almost sure to win.
Sala made it clear that she wanted “Nancy.”
Many, including John Burton, assumed she meant Nancy Walker, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Sala Burton had another Nancy in mind: a political insider and longtime ally of the Burtons who had never run for office but was well known for both her political savvy and her ability to raise money.
By 1987, the youngest of Nancy Pelosi’s five children had graduated from high school, so Pelosi was ready to run for office. With the backing of the Burtons, who had allies and supporters throughout San Francisco, Pelosi won that 1987 special election, defeating Supervisor Harry Britt. Pelosi has been reelected every two years since and is expected to win another term in November 2024.
Those events, from 1963-64 through 1987, set the stage for July 2024.
Kamala Harris, right, San Francisco’s new district attorney, with her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, holding a copy of the Bill of Rights, takes the oath of office from California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George during inauguration ceremonies on Jan. 8, 2004, in San Francisco.
AP Photo/George Nikitin, File
In the mid-1990s, when Harris was a young prosecutor in Alameda County, she was romantically involved with Willie Brown. Brown was married at the time. By then, he had a decades-old reputation for squiring women other than his wife around San Francisco and Sacramento and being the best-dressed politician in California, and possibly anywhere.
After they broke up, Brown was Harris’ political mentor, helping her get started in San Francisco politics and win her upset victory in the 2003 district attorney’s race there. From there, she became the state attorney general, a U.S. senator, the Democratic vice president and, now, the Democratic nominee for president.
The Burton brothers set out in the 1960s to move the Democratic Party in California leftward, and in doing that put a chain of events in motion that has the whole world’s attention today. Now, Kamala Harris espouses the same progressive politics that were embodied by Phil Burton and his brother John and carried forward by their anointed heirs.
Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s statement that “all politics is local” is quoted too frequently, and is less true than in the past. But it turns out that in San Francisco, once in a while, all local politics are national.
Lincoln Mitchell, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
