Pro-Palestine and antiwar advocates have done a good job of staging dramatic events outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. By commanding media attention, convention protest is a good way to reach the broader public. But it’s unlikely to have much effect on candidate Kamala Harris’s policies, much less what President Joe Biden actually does.

Plus: The Biden administration’s announced optimism about ratification of a cease-fire agreement complicates the public politics of everything. Even well-informed experts are unlikely to have reliable information about who’s gumming up progress. There is, of course, every reason to distrust public announcements from Israel and from Hamas.

But the presidential primary process is a great place for movements to execute influence…under normal circumstances.

If we go back to the 1968 Chicago convention, we can see both the extent and limits of protest influence in the OLD party system. Eugene McCarthy, a quirky senator from Minnesota challenged incumbent president Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Campaigning specifically on stopping the Vietnam War, McCarthy won 42 percent of the primary vote–4,000 fewer votes than Johnson won, but enough to shake up Democratic politics.

It was shocking. Johnson announced that he was dropping out of the race, and many other candidates, most notably New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy,* hopped in. By the time Chicago came around, Kennedy had been assassinated and it was very clear that the primary process wouldn’t influence the selection of the Democratic nominee nor the policies he would advocate. That frustration and lack of representation is one reason (of many) the streets of Chicago and the politics of the convention were so chaotic and crazy.

After Republican Richard Nixon narrowly defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party set up a special commission to boost the representation of rank and file Democrats, particularly young people, women, and minorities. The McGovern-Fraser commission set up all sorts of rules to make the delegates representative and to make the primaries the main game. (Republicans followed with similar reforms.) George McGovern, senator from South Dakota, understood these new rules very well, and won the Democratic nomination to challenge Nixon in 1972–without ever gaining substantial support from mainstream party leaders. He lost the November election in an historic landslide.

But the primary process held. Below much national visibility, activists recognized great opportunities to present their issues to primary candidates hungry for attention and support. Movement activists were the ones who would actually show up for events, and they came prepared with pointed questions. In low visibility, low turnout events, they got to ask those questions….over and over again. Candidates eager to distinguish themselves responded to grassroots passions with commitments that most of the party regulars had no interest in.

In the Republican Party, social conservatives quickly became a valuable constituency, one successfully cultivated and exploited by Ronald Reagan, who took strong positions for prayer in schools and against abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment. The primary process made it critical for ambitious Republicans to sign pledges against all taxes–positions they would have avoided taking in the old system.

Democratic candidates took the opposite side, strongly, on those social issues, and sought to win activist support on new issues that came up in each election cycle: opposition to the B-1 bomber, support for the Nuclear Freeze Resolution, decriminalizing border crossing, and so on.

Often, strong positions were liabilities in the general election, but smart politicians knew that they had to get to the general election first–and then they could try to find some way to blur the strong positions they had eagerly endorsed not long before.

Issue activists quickly learned that a trip to Iowa or New Hampshire to shout questions at candidates could pay large dividends.

But not in 2024.

Donald Trump never really wanted to run on issues, and his challengers in the primary focused more on his persona. in an odd symmetry, Biden’s only challenger, Rep. Dean Phillips, ran a short-lived candidacy praising Biden on policy, but (prematurely!) arguing that Biden was too old to run an effective campaign. No issues here either.

Pro-Palestine activists ran “Uncommitted” slates of delegates in several states, trying to ensure a real debate at the convention, but Biden won sufficient delegates very early on. By the time Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris, the primary opportunity was long gone.

For all of her energies and charms, Harris scooted to the Democratic nomination without any of the baggage that the primary process usually hangs on the ultimate nominee. She hasn’t had to offer sharp responses to the movements that would certainly demand them. And she hasn’t had to say no. She has been able to roll out her positions at a rather leisurely pace–surely an edge in most elections.

For oh so many reasons, the 2024 election will be very different than those of the past 50 years or so.

• *Yes, it’s Senator Kennedy’s crazy son who has mounted an odd campaign for the presidency this year.