"Jackson's campaign is a chaotic charge. When the reporters (six at the end of last week, now closer to thirty) step into the DC9 at some unearthly hour of the morning, no-one knows where they will end up that day . . . Additional stops to the itinerary are dropped and added at will. The Reverend, as he is called by his aides, walks easily up and down the plane, swapping jokes with the press corps."
"Although Jackson had run a highly creditable third in the 1984 Democratic primary, behind Walter Mondale and Gary Hart, some political commentators initially dismissed his 1988 run on the ground that he couldn't break out of his Black voting base. After he posted second-place finishes in Minnesota and Maine, the pundits could no longer ignore him or his message, which, in a field largely made up of milquetoast centrists who seemed to be running scared from the drubbing that the liberal Mondale had received at the hands of Ronald Reagan, stood out as an unashamedly populist one."
"He ran for President twice on the concerns that still define American political life-inequality, affordability, and vanishing jobs."
Jesse Jackson ran two presidential campaigns centered on inequality, affordability, and vanishing jobs. He combined civil-rights credentials, soaring rhetoric, and relentless energy to generate momentum despite limited resources. His campaigns used improvisational tactics, including renting a press plane and changing itineraries to maximize exposure. Jackson finished a strong third in 1984 and posted unexpected second-place finishes in Minnesota and Maine in 1988. He promoted unashamedly populist policies, including higher taxes on the wealthy, and directly challenged the regressive effects of Reagan-era tax cuts to address economic anxieties.
Read at The New Yorker
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