The city that has hosted by far the most national conventions of the major parties will add to its legacy in 2024.
Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images
It appears that Chicago has won the competition for the dubious honor of hosting the atavistic spectacle of a national political convention. It was widely reported on Tuesday that the city was chosen to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention over Atlanta (the clear runner-up) and New York. The event will be held from August 19-22, 2024 and will likely focus on boosting President Joe Biden's re-election bid. This will be Chicago's 26th Congress of the Major Partiesthe furthest city, though it hasn't hosted one since 1996.
With Republicans already planning to meet 90 miles away in Milwaukee a month earlier (July 15-18, to be exact), Chicago's choice underscores the Midwest's strategic importance to both parties in 2024. Yes, Illinois is a blue-state lock. But its close proximity to the battleground states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — which have Democratic governors who supported Chicago's effort — makes it well-placed. And while the impact of convention venues on the next general election is debatable at best, it can't hurt. Even the largely virtual 2020 Democratic convention in Milwaukee may have helped turn Wisconsin — the third-closest state in this election — from a 2016 Trump state to a 2020 Biden state.
And while Chicago reportedly He won a recommendation by a technical advisory group evaluating bidding cities on day-to-day issues such as hotel availability and local fundraising ability, there is little doubt that the final decision was policy made (or at least supported) by Joe Biden personally. This apparently means he decided that the alternative “sun belt” regional strategy to bring Democrats to Atlanta wasn't as fruitful (after all, New York wasn't really in the campaign).
It must have been tempting. The two states closest to Wisconsin in 2020 were ultimately Georgia and Arizona. And Georgia, of course, was key to the Democrats' success in 2020 and 2022 in winning control of the US Senate. The move to Atlanta, with its rich civil rights history, could also be interpreted as a valentine to the black voters who were so central to Biden's rise to the presidency.
But Chicago (home to President Barack Obama and newly elected black mayor Brandon Johnson, who personally lobbied Biden on behalf of his city) is also an important political center for black voters. And perhaps just as important, the labor movement, which will be essential to any national democratic effort in 2024, put a lot of pressure on Democrats to reject Atlanta, with its right-to-work law, non-union hotels and the state's anti-union Republican leadership.
If a tiebreaker were needed, Illinois Gov The JB Pritzker Promise Making sure Democrats didn't leave Chicago in debt may have been the key. After all, Pritzker is rich enough to personally cash in on that promise if need be.
In the end, the 2024 Democratic convention is likely to be a tightly choreographed celebration of the Biden presidency and a springboard for the general election campaign, much like the 1996 Chicago convention was when Bill Clinton and Al Gore began building rhetoric “bridge to the 21st century” there, and Democrats rebounded from midterm defeats to win an easy presidential re-election. We have no way of knowing at this point whether the 2024 convention will give the world a pop culture moment like the Macarena dance craze of the 1996 rally. However, the Windy City will certainly be home to powerful torrents of political rhetoric, particularly if the Republicans have already guaranteed a Biden-Trump rematch, which would galvanize the bases of both parties and give Democrats a chance to hold a convention to swing voters in places like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
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