Read more analysis at the CNN link.

Still life with Cat. Sebastiano Lazzari, 1728

Oldsters like me remember the last time the Democrats met in Chicago in the chaotic year 1968. What will happen this time? 

David Smith at The Guardian: ‘The world is watching’: 1968 protests set stage for Democratic convention.

Sean Wilentz was in the convention hall when someone handed out copies of a news wire report. “I remember the first line,” he says. “It said, ‘The lid blew off of this convention city tonight.’” The article went on to describe chaos and bloodshed in Chicago as police clashed with protesters against the Vietnam war.

Just 17 at the time, Wilentz and a couple of friends raced to the scene in downtown Chicago. “It was horrible. The cops were angry and didn’t like the kids and the kids were angry and didn’t like the cops. I saw a motorcycle cop go on a sidewalk and pin a kid against the wall. I was very scared.”

More than half a century has passed since a police riot scarred the Democratic national convention of 1968. On Monday Democrats return to Chicago with a spring in their step as they prepare to anoint Kamala Harris their presidential candidate. Yet some comparisons with the events of 56 years ago are irresistible.

Just as in 1968, a would-be assassin has sought to change the course of political history. Just as in 1968, an incumbent president has stepped aside and a vice-president will gain the Democratic nomination without winning a single primary vote. And just as in 1968, protesters will gather to demonstrate their anger over US involvement in an unpopular war.

Democrats are praying that the similarities end there. When the teargas cleared in Chicago, Hubert Humphrey, a self-styled “happy warrior”, emerged as the standard-bearer of a bitterly divided party. He went on to lose the election to Richard Nixon who, like fellow Republican Donald Trump, pushed a “law and order” message to exploit white voters’ fears and prejudices.

Of course there’s really no comparison between this year and the horrifying violence of 1968–riots in many cities, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the war in Vietnam and the antiwar protests all over the country. Back to the Guardian article:

Much has changed since Trump secured the Republican nomination at the party’s own convention in Milwaukee last month. With 81-year-old Joe Biden fading in opinion polls, the Democratic campaign had come to resemble a death march. But his decision to quit the race and throw his weight behind Harris triggered an explosion of relief, self-belief and surging enthusiasm.

Next week’s Democratic convention will put the capstone on the dramatic turnaround. Harris and running mate Tim Walz, who have been drawing huge crowds at rallies and millions of dollars in donations, will be formally nominated and deliver the most important speeches of their careers – probably resulting in a further polling bump.

Still Life with Soup, Fernando Botero, 1972

But the carefully stage-managed event – also featuring Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and A-list celebrities – could yet go off script. Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters are expected to gather outside to demand that the US end military aid to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza, where the death toll has surpassed 40,000, according to the healthy ministry there.

The March on the DNC, a coalition of more than 200 organisations from all over the US, plans to hold demonstrations on Monday and Thursday, the days when Biden and Harris are due to speak. Its website brands the president “Genocide Joe Biden” and warns: “Democratic party leadership switching out their presidential nominee does not wash the blood of over 50,000 Palestinians off their hands.”

Although a sprawling security plan has been drawn up by federal, state and city governments, some activists have vowed a replay of 1968, when years of unrest over the American misadventure in Vietnam came to a head in Chicago. Then, as now, students took up the anti-war cause with campus protests, including at Columbia University in New York, where Hamilton Hall was occupied in both 1968 and 2024.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

ABC News: As Chicago braces for Democratic National Convention, concerns over safety mount.

With more than 50,000 people estimated to descend on Chicago next week for the Democratic National Convention, the city said it is prepared to make sure the week is a success, not just for visitors, but for city residents themselves.

“Our plan is to make sure we keep everyone within the city safe. We want this to be successful,” Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told an audience at the City Club of Chicago.

While thousands of protestors are expected in Chicago, Snelling said the city is better prepared than it was in 2020, when street protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis led to arsons, looting, and rioting downtown.

Officers and police leadership have been engaged in extra training for more than a year to prepare for civil disobedience, he said. Hundreds of extra law enforcement from across the state will also be on hand, not just to strengthen security around the United Center on Chicago’s west side, but also to make sure 50 neighborhoods in the city are protected.

“We have a city to protect. The Chicago Police Department will be in every single neighborhood protecting the neighborhoods so we will not deplete resources from our neighborhoods,” he said….

Meanwhile, activists have been battling the city of Chicago in federal court over permitting rights. The Coalition to March on the DNC, which represents 200 social justice organizations from throughout the Midwest, filed for permits in 2023, however, they sued the city for violating its First Amendment right to protest.

While permits for the coalition are approved, the organization said the city, citing safety reasons, is unfairly restricting them by preventing the organization from constructing stages, connecting sound equipment and having portable toilets at Union Park.

During an emergency hearing on Friday, however, the city agreed to allow for the stage and speaker system for both rallies. U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood also ruled last week that activists must follow a protest route outlined by the city which is shorter and a further distance from the United Center.

More details on the planned protests at ABC.

Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, Still Life with Cat and Fish, 1631

Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s so-called “news conference” yesterday, but I just want to touch on it briefly. I actually watched it, and it was a disaster. Trump read from sheets of paper in a monotone, interspersed with his usual insane diatribes like the one about birds being massacred by wind turbines, angry denunciations of Harris, Walz, Biden, and his many other “enemies”–and of course a few of his “sir stories.” This went on for close to an hour, and then he took about 5 questions. Why any reporter would show up for his dog and pony shows is a mystery.

But one of his remarks was particularly egregious. As Daknikat wrote, he denigrated the Medal of Honor that is awarded to military service members “who have distinguished themselves with acts of valor.” Here Some military organizations have responded.

From Military Times: Trump belittles Medal of Honor award in campaign speech.

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday said the Presidential Medal of Freedom is a “better” award than the Defense Department’s Medal of Honor because service members have to sacrifice their lives or health to receive the military’s highest honor, the latest in a series of controversial campaign comments from the Republican presidential candidate….

Trump…compared the civilian medal to the Medal of Honor, the highest military award for battlefield valor, which has been awarded to just 3,517 troops out of the 41 million who have served their nation.

“It’s the equivalent of the congressional Medal of Honor,” Trump said of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “But the civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone that gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers.”

“They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead,” he said….

According to Defense Department rules, the Medal of Honor is awarded to servicemembers who distinguish themselves “through conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.”

That list includes Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, awarded the honor in posthumously in 2021. Cashe died from burn wounds suffered in 2005 attempting to save six fellow soldiers trapped in a burning vehicle following a roadside bomb attack in Iraq.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry received the honor in 2011 for valor in Afghanistan. He lost his hand in a enemy grenade blast after picking up the explosive and hurling it away from two fellow soldiers, saving their lives.

Individuals recognized for honor often have to wait years for military reviews and reports to validate their bravery. Since the start of the Vietnam War, 264 individuals have received the honor for battlefield valor. Only 60 are still living.

From The Veterans of Foreign Wars: VFW Admonishes Former President for Medal of Honor Remarks.

“On Thursday, former President Donald Trump spoke at an event where he made some flippant remarks about the Medal of Honor and the heroes who have received it. In the video that has circulated online and in the media, the former president was recognizing Miriam Adelson in the audience who he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his time in office. As he described the medal as the civilian version of the Medal of Honor, he went on to opine that the Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the military’s top award, because those awarded the latter are, in his words, “ … either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” He continued by comparing Miriam to MoH recipients saying, “She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman. They are rated equal.”

These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.

When a candidate to serve as our military’s commander-in-chief so brazenly dismisses the valor and reverence symbolized by the Medal of Honor and those who have earned it, I must question whether they would discharge their responsibilities to our men and women in uniform with the seriousness and discernment necessary for such a powerful position. It is even more disappointing when these comments come from a man who already served in this noble office and should frankly already know better….

We would like to remind Mr. Trump that the 12 times he had the honor of awarding the Medal of Honor as president of the United States, those were heroes not of his own choosing. He bestowed those medals on behalf of Congress, representing all Americans of a grateful nation. We hold the donation of their lives in service to our country in the highest esteem, and so should he.”

Trump is such an asshole.

Supposedly, Harris and Trump agreed to a debate schedule that was released yesterday, but Paige Oamek of The New Republic writes that Trump is still wavering: Trump Is Pissed at Harris for Trapping Him in Two Debates.

Is Donald Trump really trying to get out of debating Kamala Harris again? Or is it the opposite?

On Thursday, it seemed like the dust had finally settled. “The debate about debates is over,” said Michael Tyler, the Harris campaign communications director, in a statement. “Donald Trump’s campaign accepted our proposal for three debates—two presidential and a vice presidential debate.”

“Assuming Donald Trump actually shows up on September 10 to debate Vice President Harris, then Governor Walz will see JD Vance on October 1 and the American people will have another opportunity to see the vice president and Donald Trump on the debate stage in October,” the Harris campaign continued.

But now, Trump’s team claims that the Democrat lied when she said the two sides reached a debate agreement. At the moment, there is only one confirmed debate between the presidential nominees, to be held September 10 by ABC News.

Nevertheless, the Trump campaign’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Caller Friday that Trump will be doing three debates and Vance will be doing two.

Huh? Apparently, Trump is still claiming there will be a debate on Fox News.

“Let’s be clear: President Trump will be on the debate stage THREE times with Fox News, ABC, and NBC/Telemundo. Likewise, Senator Vance will show up to debate Tim Walz on TWO occasions, on September 18 with CNN and October 1 with CBS. If Harris and Walz don’t show up, an empty podium can stand in their place, proving to the American people just how weak they are,” Leavitt told the Caller.

Trump had waffled for months on whether he would debate Harris, finally announcing he wanted to debate her three times on ABC, CBS, and Fox News. Harris accepted the invitations for the ABC and CBS debates but not for the one hosted by the Trump-adoring Fox.

Vance, confusingly, proposed two vice presidential debates as opposed to the traditional one. One of his proposed dates is the same day Trump is due to be sentenced for his hush-money trial.

Okay, well, I guess they will work it out eventually. Frankly I don’t care if there are debates or not.

It’s no use crying over spilt milk, by Frank Paton, 1880

The Harris campaign has got Trump’s number. I just love the way they are trolling him and getting under his skin. Irie Sentner of Politico has a piece about it: ‘When they go low, we go with the flow’: Dems ramp up attacks on Trump.

If Democrats in 2016 rallied around Michelle Obama’s mantra that “when they go low, we go high,” today they’re burying that ambition under a hill of insults, memes and snark.

In recent weeks, they’ve taken to the cable circuit to call former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance “creepy” and “weird.” During his first speech as a vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz referenced a false viral meme about Vance having intimate relations with a couch. And in a stream of official communications, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has taken on a voice less Oval Office than extremely online provocateur.

On Thursday, ahead of a Trump news conference in New Jersey, her campaign issued an “advisory” warning: “Donald Trump To Ramble Incoherently and Spread Dangerous Lies in Public, but at Different Home.”

The jabs attack a former president who has exhibited almost no boundaries in hurling his own, crude insults at Harris. Trump has questioned her racial identity and her intelligence, calling her “low IQ” and “dumb.”

And the posture is not entirely new for Democrats, who began sharpening their edges after Trump won in 2016 — and “we go high” didn’t work. But less than three months before the election, it marks an all-out abandonment of the old rules of political politesse.

“We saw what happened when we let them define us. Now, we define their messaging about us,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright. “We went from ‘when they go low, we go high,’ to ‘when they go low, we go with the flow.’ That’s what’s happening.” [….]

As Trump adheres to his standard campaign playbook — including name calling and attacks on the vice president’s race and gender — Harris has rarely responded directly. When asked about a litany of criticisms Trump made about her at a news conference last week, Harris told reporters: “I was too busy talking to voters, I didn’t hear them.”

Read more examples of Democratic snark at the Politico link.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What’s on your mind?