Will the whole world be watching when DNC, Kamala Harris hit Chicago? Will anyone?

Running on the so-called politics of joy, the vice president — subbed in when the unpopular incumbent POTUS shocked the nation by deciding not to run — captured the nomination without winning a single competitive primary. Out in the streets of Chicago, thousands of anti-war protesters marched into a line of police determined to keep them away from the convention hall. Inside the arena, Democratic elites worked to keep rebel delegates from disrupting the show — while a “law and order” Republican prepared to take advantage.

Yup, the comparisons between the mother of all political confabs — 1968’s Democratic National Convention at Chicago’s long-demolished International Amphitheater, marked by violence and nonstop chaos — and the 2024 DNC that opens Monday at the United Center are almost too easy. Dig deeper, though, and the analogies don’t really work.

The woman of the hour, vice president and already certified nominee Kamala Harris, is nothing like the sometimes awkward Hubert Humphrey, whose “Happy Warrior” shtick wouldn’t have worked on TikTok, even without the world of trouble in 1968 that kept his “politics of joy” grounded. Unlike the hundreds of delegates who screamed 56 years ago for an end to the Vietnam War, just 30 or so uncommitted delegates are hoping to raise a ruckus around Gaza. Rather than mayhem, Team Harris hopes Chicago will provide the exclamation point on one of the most stunning reversals of fortune in American political history.

In 1968, protesters who massed outside downtown’s Conrad Hilton Hotel, where candidate Humphrey was staying, chanted that “the whole world is watching” as cops in baby-blue helmets clubbed them and fired off tear gas. That’s because the whole world pretty much was watching an event when the future of America was on the line and no one could predict what would happen next. The Nielsen TV rating of 28.5 (percentage of households) for the 1968 DNC was nearly double last month’s 14.3 rating for Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention acceptance speech in Milwaukee.

The Democrats’ real problem in 1968 was that their convention was too exciting. Harris’ biggest worry for next week should be that it might be too boring.

After all, how could anyone top the drama of the last two months, which started with President Joe Biden’s campaign-ending botched debate in Atlanta, the failed assassination attempt on Trump, the GOP’s cult-like gathering in Milwaukee, the lightning bolt drama of Harris replacing Biden, and the explosive catharsis from approving Democrats, which only grew with the somewhat surprising pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate?

A flurry of new polls is showing that the massive vibe shift around the Harris/Walz ticket — coupled with Trump’s slurred, conspiratorial failure to come up with a strategy to counter it — has turned the key swing states from Pennsylvania to North Carolina by as many as 8-10 points in her direction. It’s been largely a triumph of branding — the vague promise of “freedom” on popular issues like reproductive rights — over substance.

Can Harris sustain that kind of momentum without a more detailed platform of what she’d actually do as president, and how it might look different from Biden? Or should she use Chicago as a grand opportunity to fill in some of the blanks?

“They’ve done a great job on the way there, which makes her job easier,” Larry Sabato, the veteran University of Virginia historian who watched that 1968 convention with other politically precocious high school buddies, told me this week. His advice to Harris is to keep her message uplifting and nonspecific and to resist the growing media demands for an unscripted news conference. “Getting pushed into a press conference helps Trump, and it helps the press,” Sabato said. “The one person it doesn’t help is Kamala Harris.”

Whether Harris gets more specific is a big question looming over Chicago, but it’s not the only one. Here are four key ones:

1. No, seriously, what is her policy? It’s not surprising given the abrupt way she was handed the nomination, but Harris — who doesn’t even have a “policy” tab on her campaign website — has promised voters a future-focused presidency with few, if any, insights on what that future would look like or how it would differ from the last four years under Biden. Since July, her campaign has gotten more specific on what she does not support — the fracking ban and Medicare for All plans she backed in 2019 — than what she does now endorse.

That has to change, and it already is. A speech Friday in the key swing state of North Carolina has promised to address economic concerns, including corporate price gouging, and is likely to feature some breaks from Biden without broadly dissing his fiscal policies. Her DNC acceptance speech next week, typically the most-watched event of the convention, will probably include lots of personal bio and stirring uplift, but will it offer any bold new ideas on policy?

» READ MORE: America will never be the same after Milwaukee’s tent revival for the cult of Donald Trump | Will Bunch

2. Chaos in the streets? Protests at July’s RNC in Milwaukee largely fizzled (historically, leftists protest Democrats more than Republicans ... go figure), but thousands are expected to march next week in Chicago for a variety of mostly progressive causes, but mainly to urge Biden, Harris, and their fellow Democrats to dial back support for Israel in its lethal and ongoing campaign in Gaza, which has been blamed for 40,000 deaths, largely civilians. The two biggest marches, on constrained routes barred from passing the United Center, go off on Monday and Thursday.

Many have pointed out that Chicago’s current progressive mayor, the pro-justice-reform Brandon Johnson, is the polar opposite of notorious 1968 mayor Richard J. Daley, a cheerleader for that year’s police crackdown. But America is a much more militarized and on-edge police state today than it was a half-century ago, and the martial culture of rank-and-file cops hasn’t changed as much as the transition in City Hall. The potential for massive disruptions — which would instantly become fodder for the GOP, especially in the era of iPhone videos — definitely exists.

3. Chaos in the hall? The Democrats’ goal of a four-day pro-Harris love fest inside the United Center faces one small problem: the election last spring of about 30 delegates — mostly from Minnesota and Michigan, with large Arab American populations — running on “uncommitted” slates to not support the current ticket, but to press their demands for a cease-fire in Gaza and at least a temporary halt in U.S. weapons sales to Israel. This small group will urge the Democrats to adopt a platform that is more favorable to the Palestinian cause, and many expect the uncommitted faction to raise a ruckus if they feel the crisis in the Middle East is being ignored.

It seems silly to worry about such a small sliver of dissidents when compared to the large anti-Vietnam War faction that sang “We Shall Overcome” in 1968, or even the sizable group of boisterous and sometimes disruptive Bernie Sanders supporters in Philadelphia in 2016. It reveals the obsession of party leaders with complete control, which brings us to ...

4. Will America be bored to tears? Every statement from the Harris/Walz campaign stresses its focus on the future, so it’s interesting in that context that what little we know about next week’s schedule is that speakers will include a likely emotional valedictory from Biden as well as Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton. I get it. It’s a powerful contrast with last month’s RNC, which shunned past luminaries like George W. Bush in favor of the low-wattage star power of Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock. On the other hand, are the young voters — so critical for deciding this election — excited to hear from Hillary Clinton and other ghosts of politics past?

What is more remarkable: How few people watch these four-day infomercials disguised as political conventions compared to the 1960s, or that anyone still watches at all? For what it’s worth, Team Harris seems to get this. The campaign is placing a special emphasis on chopping up the best bites of Chicago and repackaging them in 30- or 60-second pieces on TikTok, Instagram, or the other places where young persuadables actually watch.

A four-day festival of content creation? Why not? America said goodnight David, goodnight Chet, and goodbye to Uncle Walter a long time ago. What will matter most from Chicago is what pops up on your iPhone: Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” or tear gas. The whole world is clicking.

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