Jesse Jackson Knew Where We Were Headed

"One day in Marshalltown, Iowa, as the eventual and poisonous 2016 Democratic presidential primary was just getting underway, I found myself hanging around Main Street on a dead-level Sunday afternoon. Suddenly, like the sun breaking through the thickening February clouds, I saw the long march of progressive politics within the Democratic Party, from when it was stuffed in a steamer trunk by Bill Clinton to its (partial) liberation under Barack Obama."

"'The interesting thing is that Bernie was a Jackson supporter, and was one of the two white officeholders to risk their jobs across the color line, so Jim Hightower (the longtime Texas populist firebrand) and Bernie were the two that did that, and he helped us win the Vermont caucus in April of '88, which is actually when I met Bernie."

"One of the people standing around the sidewalk, waiting for the approaching candidate, was Steve Cobble, whose specialty is wrangling delegates. In 1988, he did it for the campaign of Jesse Jackson. (Ironically, Tad Devine, who is Bernie Sanders's campaign manager, did that same job that year for Michael Dukakis. Devine won.) The two Jackson campaigns-1984 and 1988-have become lost from the political narrative of the following 30 years,"

Progressive politics within the Democratic Party underwent a long arc from suppression under Bill Clinton to partial liberation under Barack Obama. Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns provided a throughline for modern progressive currents. Delegate operatives like Steve Cobble worked Jackson's 1988 campaign while Tad Devine managed Michael Dukakis's delegate effort. Bernie Sanders was an early Jackson supporter and one of two white officeholders who crossed the color line, helping Jackson win the Vermont caucus in April 1988. The two Jackson campaigns have been largely omitted from mainstream political narratives despite serving as an undeniable historical source for contemporary progressive Democratic politics.

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