The longtime party figure and native Chicagoan previews this week’s Democratic National Convention, and offers a message to his fellow Democrats about the prospects of the Harris-Walz ticket come Election Day.
Perhaps no city has been more connected with the Democratic Party than Chicago. And this week, Chicago will host its 12th Democratic convention, nominating Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz.
We asked Bill Daley, who has spent his life in Democratic politics, about the new ticket. What case does Harris need to make to win this November? „I think she has to lay out a vision“, Daley said. „She has to show who she is as a person, and kind of what she believes, not so much the litany of specific positions on issues, but sort of a sense of who she is and what does she believe in.“
In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, the city hosted the Democratic convention. That year, like this year, the incumbent exited the race. And that year, like this year, violence marred the campaign.
At the turbulent convention that August, Bill Daley was at the side of his father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, the memory of whom still looms large in Chicago. Meanwhile, outside the convention hall, there were bloody confrontations between police and anti-war protesters, putting Mayor Daley in the spotlight.
Costa asked, „[Did] your father ever have any regrets years later about how that all played out in ’68?“
„If he did, he didn’t express them“, Daley replied.
