05) Democratic Convention Chicago 1968

When Chicago's  $35 Million -- ugly, and environmentally unsound -- McCormick Place Convention Center, burned down in 1967, Mayor Daley (one of the few "supporters"  of the center),  determined to hold on to the the Democratic convention of 1968, moved it to the out of town Amphitheater, at the edge of the now closed Union stockyards. The delegates  would still be put up in a hotel across from Grant Park.

During the democratic primaries for the 1968 presidential election, anti-war senator Eugene McCarthy had scared president Johnson out of the race, Bobby Kennedy had joined in and won some major primaries before being assassinated.

McGovern (another 'liberal' candidate), inherited his candidates, and mantle, and yet at the convention, in smoke filled rooms, behind closed doors, "middle class, middle aged, white men", picked Hubert Humphrey (who had not even run in a single primary). The crowd gathered outside the Convention in Grant Park exploded.

The police and Illinois National Guard overreacted, and by many accounts, lost control, assaulting anyone within sight. The brutality  was condemned on the floor of the convention floor by Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff: 

 “with George McGovern we wouldn’t have Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.”

The T.V. Cameras pick up the vision, but not the sound of "Boss" Daley shouting a response to Ribicoff, amateur and "professional" lip readers alike, have claimed what Daley said went something along the following lines:

“Fxxx you, you Jxx son of a bxxxx! You lousy motherfxxxxx! Go home!”

After Nixon's victory, McGovern lead the commission that reformed the Democratic nomination process, and it is credible to say " you can draw a direct line from the riots in Grant park in 1968, to Obama's  of victory speech at the same location 40 years later on November 4, 2008."