This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is, admittedly, a worn out cliché, especially when it refers to the Democratic Party.

But it remains to be seen whether that phrase applies to the 2016 election, especially when it comes to the Democratic Party.

The Democrats, after a disastrous 2014 midterm election that gave their GOP adversaries strong majorities in the Senate and House, assuring four more years of government gridlock, seemed ready to capture the presidency once again — at least until the last two weeks when the two major political parties held back-to-back national conventions.

President Barack Obama has about a 50 percent approval rating, nearly double that of the last Republican president, George W. Bush, at the same point in his presidency.

The Republicans nominated a divisive figure who many prominent members of their party cannot support, with some stalwarts even leaving the party over the nomination.

The second-place finisher in the Republican nominating process — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — refused to endorse Trump at the convention, leading to some chaos and leaving many Cruz supporters in a quandary about what to do when the voting counts in November.

The Democrats had a strong candidate in Hillary Clinton — arguably the most prepared person ever to take on the presidency, at least on paper.

But Clinton went through a grueling primary process with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, whose social justice rhetoric brought a whole new army of enthusiasts to the political stage, and Clinton's standing as the party's flag-bearer was damaged.

She was hurt further by the partisan investigations by Republicans trying to blame her for the death of ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi and by her own bad judgment in what has become a damaging scandal over her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

But the death blow to the Democrats may have come from self inflicted wounds this past week at the Democratic National Convention when Sanders supporters refused to take no for an answer after their candidate lost and stagged protests at a confab that is supposed to bring factions of a political party together.

The demonstration at the convention has left prognosticators wondering if the Sanders people will simply take their campaign enthusiasm and go home rather than help Clinton and the Democrats secure a November victory.

This convention was not as bad as the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 that ended up being a disaster for Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey — not even close.

But there are enough similarities that it should give Democrats pause.

When it became clear Humphrey would get the Democratic nomination over challengers Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern — two candidates running on an anti-Vietnam war platform — the anti-war faction of the party became enraged and staged furious protests outside the convention hall.

Millions watched on national television as Mayor Richard Daley led his storm trooper cops into a violent confrontation with the protesters, which turned into a full-fledged police riot.

Daley was a Humphrey supporter and the eventual Democratic nominee and his party never recovered from that image.

That led to a narrow Humphrey loss to Republican Richard Nixon in November.

In Philadelphia, the police acted very differently than the 1968 Chicago contingent. The cops were respectful and professional. But inside the convention hall, Sanders' supporters disrupted speeches continually, booing and even marching in the streets saying the Democratic nominee of their party should be locked up.

We'll see what kind of long-term effects that has when the election rolls around in November.

Also, 1968 was a year of unprecedented violence that permeated the political landscape, both in terms of anti-war riots and assassinations.

The murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. caused frightening race riots across the nation and gave Nixon an issue he rode to the White House as the "law and order" candidate.

The killing of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy left the anti-war movement in the party without a true moral leader, although McCarthy and McGovern tried to pick up the mantle.

This year, week after week we see mass killings, or police shooting of unarmed black men leading to renewed racial tensions and, recently, the sniper murders of unsuspecting police offers.

That has made the Trump the new self-appointed "law and order" candidate.

One more similarity.

The recent hacking and release of Democratic National Committee emails showing the party leaders were trying to help Clinton defeat Sanders has damaged the party and Clinton politically. There is mounting evidence that the Russians were behind the hacking and growing suspicion they were doing it to help Trump, especially since his campaign manger, Paul Manafort, has been a lobbyist for Russian interests in the past.

In 1968, the Democrats launched the "October surprise" by planning cease fire talks with the North Vietnamese just prior to the election to help Humphrey with the anti-war voters.

But Nixon had a close political ally named Anna Chennault, who had a direct channel to Nguyen Van Thieu, president of the U.S.-backed South Vietnam, and she persuaded the American ally to refuse to attend the peace talks.

That blew up the Democrats' strategy and may have helped prolong the war, leading to the deaths of many more U.S. soldiers, all for the political benefit of the Republican candidate.