The Democrats lost the White House in 1968 amid anti-war protests. What will 2024 bring?

When student Lauren Brown first heard the commotion, including firecrackers, she assumed the sounds were coming from nearby frat houses. Then, at around four in the morning, she heard helicopters. Later, she awoke to news and footage of a violent attack by pro-Israeli protesters on an encampment set up to oppose the ongoing war in Gaza.

“It was hard to watch,” said Brown, 19, a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose dorm was near the encampment. “And I wondered where the police were. I saw posts from people talking about them being teargassed and maced and campus security was just watching.”

Eventually, a big police contingent did arrive and forcibly cleared the sprawling encampment early on Thursday morning. Flash-bangs were launched to disperse crowds gathered outside and more than 200 people were arrested. Afterward, campus facility workers could be seen picking up flattened tents and pieces of spray-painted plywood, and throwing them into grey dumpsters.

Similar scenes of tumult have played out this week at about 40 universities and colleges in America, resulting in clashes with police, mass arrests and a directive from Joe Biden to restore order. The unrest has unfolded from coast to coast on a scale not seen since the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and 1970s.

The president has cause for concern as the issue threatens his youth vote, divides his Democratic party and gives Donald Trump’s Republicans an opening to push allegations of antisemitism and depict Biden’s America as spiralling out of control.

There are inescapable parallels with 1968, a tumultuous year of assassinations and anti-war demonstrations that led to chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Democrats lost the White