On Tuesday, Democrats announced that they would hold their 2024 nominating convention in Chicago.
This strikes me as a weird — and potentially bad — choice.
The logic for Democrats in picking Chicago seemed to be that it’s in the Midwest — a critical battleground area for both parties in the next presidential election.
“Illinois along with Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota – part of the ‘blue wall’ – were crucial" to Joe Biden winning the White House in 2020, the Democratic National Committee said in a statement on the pick. (All 4 states also have Democratic governors.)
“The Midwest is key to a victory in 2024, and there is no city better positioned to reach those voters than Chicago,” said Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Let’s talk about that for a minute.
So, yes, Chicago is obviously in the Midwest. It is the biggest city — by population — in the region. It is a place that has hosted no fewer than 11 Democratic conventions, the most recent being in 1996.
But, it’s not a swing state in any way, shape or form. Which has, typically, been the number one criteria in picking a convention host city — particularly over the last two decades. Shower the city (and state) with money and attention in hopes of showing voters in the state how focused you are on them. That’s the logic at least.
It’s that line of thinking that led to the selections of the last 4 Democratic convention cities: Milwaukee (2020), Philadelphia (2016), Charlotte (2012) and Denver (2008). Not since 2004 have Democrats held the convention in a non-swing state; in that instance, Boston made sense as a convention site since Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was the party’s nominee.
Does putting a convention in a swing state actually have an impact? That’s debatable. Democrats carried Wisconsin in 2020 but lost Pennsylvania in 2016. Barack Obama narrowly lost North Carolina — after carrying it in 2008 — to Mitt Romney in 2012. Obama did carry Colorado in 2008 after holding the convention in the state capital.
So, maybe?
What we can say is that choosing to put the convention in a safely Democratic city is a clear strategic shift from how past Democratic convention pickers approached the decision.1
The New York Times smartly notes that Illinois not only has a prominent liberal governor but is a strong labor state and has been on the forefront of putting in place laws to restrict guns and protect the right to an abortion.
Biden and his team then seemed to prize Democratic values — and Democratic voters — over trying to appeal to swing state voters, at least in where they put the convention.
Which is a choice! But one that breaks with two decades of how it’s been done. And one that differs from how Republicans are approaching their convention, which will be held in Milwaukee — in the swing state of Wisconsin.
Then there is the issue of Chicago the city. For the last 5 years (or so), it has been — especially for Republicans — a symbol of the failures of Democratic leadership on the issue of crime.
As Bloomberg’s editors noted last month:
Chicago’s recent plight is hard to overstate. Already in 2023, more than 70 people have been slain. That follows a surge in gun violence during the pandemic, with more than 800 people killed in 2021 and nearly 700 last year. Total serious crime rose by more than 33% from 2019, when Lightfoot took office, to 2022.
Crain’s Chicago Business made a similar point in late 2022:
Cities around the U.S. have seen a spike in killings over the last couple of years, but Chicago is unique among big cities in a couple of respects. For one, the increase in violence here started before the pandemic. Chicago's homicide rate followed the same ebbs and flows as those of New York and Los Angeles for most of the 20th century, including a steep decline that began in the 1990s and continued into the 2000s, according to an analysis by the University of Chicago Crime Lab. But in the middle of that decade, Chicago's homicide rate leveled off while the others continued to drop—and in 2016, violence in Chicago surged ahead, cementing a statistical break with those coastal peer cities.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s tenure in office was hamstrung by questions over her ability to keep the city safe. She wound up finishing third in this year’s primary election, a race dominated by questions of how best to manage the city’s crime problem.
The runoff race revolved around questions of policing. Paul Vallas ran a tough-on-crime campaign that called for the hiring of more police officers. Brandon Johnson ran as the liberal alternative, calling for a more “holistic” approach to policing in the city — including spending more money on youth outreach programs and mental health.2 (Johnson won — a result widely seen as a victory for liberals within the party.)
Republicans quickly leapt on Chicago’s crime problem to denounce the pick.
"What's the bigger concern: Sirens drowning out nominating speeches or what items attendees must leave at home to make room for their bulletproof vest in their suitcase,” said Will Reinert, press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement.
Which, well, ok. A little bit of hyperbole there. But, there is NO question that calls to “defund the police” hurt Democrats — and the party has struggled to beat back Republican attacks on its record on crime in big cities in recent years.
So, why put the convention in a city where crime remains a major problem — Democrats note the trend line is moving in the right direction but… — and where the attack on crime and defunding the police is wrapped in a bow for Republicans?
Again, it seems an odd choice to me.
The push back on all of this — as I mentioned above — is that none of it matters. That where the convention goes doesn’t have any measurable impact on whether that state goes for the eventual nominee.
Which maybe! We have a very small sample size to judge so I don’t think you can conclude one way or the other. Insisting it has NO impact seems to me to be as hard to prove as arguing that convention cities have a measurable impact on the general election vote.
You can also argue that Republicans are going to make crime a central issue of the 2024 campaign no matter where Democrats held their convention. True! But why give them a ready-made four days of attacks by picking the city that has been the face of the rise in crime in big cities?
Like I said, the pick of Chicago did surprise me a bit. I don’t think the election will be decided on it or anything but it’s certainly a bit of a risk that Biden and his party are taking.
The widely-assume runner up was Atlanta, which would have been in keeping with the swing state convention city approach.
In 2020, Johnson was part of a movement advocating moving money from police departments to social service programs. He distanced himself from the “Defund the Police”movement during the mayoral campaign.
Does anybody really cast their vote for President based on where the national convention was held? It just doesn’t seem like a good reason to vote for or against someone.
I think that Atlanta would have been the much better choice, but what do I know?