The tension in the US system is between founders who believed in the virtue of the commoner and founders who feared mobocracy. At various levels of the system, the system is designed to be elitist. And the parties are fundamentally private institutions and can be as populist or elitist as they want (worth noting: in practice, the GOP constitution is more populist than the Democrat constitution, which is one of the reasons they nominated Trump; there weren't backstops in the GOP like superdelegates to push him off the ticket).

The Electoral College is often cited as serving a similar purpose... I think recent events show despite paying the consistent premium it extracts in elitist gatekeeping, when it finally mattered it failed to provide the promised protection against unethical demagogues.

2) republican candidate considered a crook

3) it's in Chicago

Whatever they do, don't do what the DNC did in 1968 again, lets try to at least make new mistakes this time I guess?

Chicago Mayor Daley and his police force made the mistakes with the protestors, much of the media coverage of the police riots falsely made it look like it was happening right outside the convention site.

I won't pretend to know the history well enough to know if there was any workable approach then, but the convention process in 1968 definitely didn't work to produce a candidate Dems were excited about at the end of it, the turnout was low and Humphrey lost in a landslide.

Also, I think some of it was happening right outside the convention site - Dan Rather was famously manhandled on national television by security guards while trying to interview someone leaving the convention.

Also, I just read that Harris has money pouring in. The donors may effectively decide this before anyone else can get traction.