On Mar. 31, 1968, amid growing opposition to his Vietnam War policies, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would neither seek nor accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. In the following months, Robert F. Kennedy, a leading contender to replace LBJ, was assassinated, and antiwar protests intensified.
In August, at a chaotic and contentious convention in Chicago, accompanied by violent clashes between police and protestors outside the hall, the delegates, most of whom were chosen by party leaders allied to Johnson, nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their standard bearer.
As historian Allen Matusow revealed in his book “The Unraveling of America,” Humphrey, who had been banished from the White House inner circle because he privately opposed escalation of the war, recognized that if he deviated from the administration’s Vietnam policy, he risked losing Johnson’s support. At convention, LBJ had shot down a proposal designed to appease the party’s peace wing that would have recommended an unconditional halt to the bombing of North Vietnam.
“I should have stood my ground,” Humphrey wrote years later.
Humphrey, way behind Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the polls, delivered a nationally televised address on September 30 in which he supported a cessation of the bombing “as an acceptable risk for peace.” Although Humphrey had barely strayed from the administration’s position, Matusow reveals that this “Delphic utterance” gave antiwar liberals a signal about the approach he would take if elected and breathed new life into his campaign.
Humphrey surged. Nixon ultimately defeated him by 110 electoral votes, although by less than 1 percentage point in the national popular vote.
The lesson for 2024 is that, in a presidential race where a candidate is closely tied to the current administration, tone, timing and subtle signaling can move voters as much or more than definitive policy pronouncements.
In her recent public statements about the war between Israel and Hamas, Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have learned that lesson. Americans — and especially Democrats — are divided about the conflict. While 58 percent believe Israel’s reasons for attacking Hamas in Gaza were valid, only 38 percent think Israel’s conduct of the war is acceptable.
Fully 34 percent of Democrats (44 percent of Democrats aged 18 to 29) claim that Hamas had legitimate reasons for attacking Israel. Equally important, 57 percent of Americans sympathize to some extent or equally with Israelis and Palestinians. Far more Americans have a favorable view of the Israeli and Palestinian people than of the Netanyahu government, the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.
The challenge for Harris, then, involves combining full-throated support for Israel’s right to defend itself with signals to Arab Americans and young Democrats that, if elected, she will do more than President Biden has to pressure Netanyahu to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to agree to a permanent cease-fire.
Here’s how she’s trying to thread that needle.
Harris has long-standing ties to Israel and the American Jewish community. As a young girl, she raised money to plant trees in Israel. Her husband, Douglas Emhoff, is Jewish and is the face of the Biden administration’s fight against antisemitism. Soon after she was sworn in as a senator, Harris introduced a resolution opposing a UN Security Council condemnation of Israel. In 2021, she declared, “When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity, when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is anti-Semitism and that is unacceptable.”
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Harris affirmed America’s “unwavering commitment” to Israel’s existence and security. She told hostage families, “President Biden and I are working every day to bring them home.” The day after Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington, during which demonstrators tore down American flags, replacing them with Palestinian flags, and burned an effigy of the prime minister, Harris said, “I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: anti-Semitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.”
That said, even as a senior administration spokesman maintained that there is “no daylight between the president and vice president” on the conflict in Gaza, Harris signaled a somewhat different approach.
In contrast to the cordial Biden-Netanyahu photo op, Harris told the prime minister, “We’ve got a lot to talk about it. I think we should get to it.” During their conversation, Harris emphasized her concern about “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity” in Gaza. She reiterated her support for Israel’s right to defend itself after the meeting, before adding, “but how it does matters.” And, she said, “We cannot be numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”
The first person in the Biden administration to support a temporary cease-fire (in March), the vice president, who endorses a two-state solution as “the only path forward,” upped the ante in July: “Let’s get the deal done so we can get a cease-fire to end the war. Let’s bring the hostages home and let’s provide much-needed relief to the Palestinian people.”
If Israel and Hamas agree to a permanent cease-fire, Harris, who has been in on all of President Biden’s phone calls with Netanyahu, can claim a share of the credit. If not — and the prospects dimmed this week after Israel’s assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh — she is likely to continue to find ways to appeal, more effectively than Biden, to the sizable majority of American voters who sympathize with Palestinians and Israelis and do not have a favorable view of their governments.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
