Jesse Jackson runs table and wins nomination and presidency in 1984.

Alright, let's suppose a national conversation does begin the Summer of '83 regarding the slow erosion of middle-class jobs. And Jesse, seasoned activist that he is, emerges as a very sensible and centrist voice. In large part, because he doesn't want to raise expectations which can't be filled.

Fall of '83, Jesse moderates a public forum of five business owners in Iowa. 4 of these owners went out of business, and 1 continued successfully. And that's the baseline statistic. 80% of new businesses fail. And the four previous owners deserve praise for heart and courage in publicly talking about this. Jesse takes easy control and makes sure all five are treated respectfully.

Jesse very realistically says ramping up loans for starting new businesses is just not in the cards.

What the SBA loan program might be able to do is to be more aggressive is loaning for the expansion of existing businesses, although this also has some risks.
 
There was real growth and real recovery in the U.S. economy the second half of 1983.

July - Sept. '83: 5.8%

Oct. - Dec. '83: 7.8%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RO1Q156NBEA

But if jobs were slow in coming back, and they often are in a recovery and I'd like to look up the specifics of this one, maybe the feeling that for all their privileges, corporations aren't really playing ball.

Jesse comes through as a sensible moderate: Corporations are the engine of the whole system. They are a force of nature. They are amoral, which is scarier than being immoral. But they are simply there, again as a force of nature. And here's the important thing --- we can bend the path.

That is, Jesse comes across as very bold in pointing to uncomfortable facts and surprisingly moderate in talking about remedy.
 
There was real growth and real recovery in the U.S. economy the second half of 1983.

July - Sept. '83: 5.8%

Oct. - Dec. '83: 7.8%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RO1Q156NBEA

But if jobs were slow in coming back, and they often are in a recovery and I'd like to look up the specifics of this one, maybe the feeling that for all their privileges, corporations aren't really playing ball.

Jesse comes through as a sensible moderate: Corporations are the engine of the whole system. They are a force of nature. They are amoral, which is scarier than being immoral. But they are simply there, again as a force of nature. And here's the important thing --- we can bend the path.

That is, Jesse comes across as very bold in pointing to uncomfortable facts and surprisingly moderate in talking about remedy.

Growth at only 0.2%, Jackson goes on the attack against trickle-down, but takes moderate solutions to avoid alienating the mainstream
 
I actually like the OTL growth, with the emphasis that you get the growth but not the jobs and that this is widely talked about.

===

don't know how much this was the case with the recovery from the 1982 recession, might start thread on Chat
 
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Here's something scheduled to happen Dec. 1 of this year:

If You Make $47,476 A Year Or Less, You’ll Be Eligible For Overtime Pay

Self Magazine, Nina Bahadur, May 18, 2016.

http://www.self.com/trending/2016/0...r-or-less-youll-be-eligible-for-overtime-pay/

' . . . The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that over 12.5 million workers who currently aren’t eligible for overtime pay will be eligible after the rule changes. These workers, 6.4 million of whom are women and 4.2 million of whom are parents, . . . '
Something like this could have easily been done in 1984 and '85.

Jesse could have mentioned the name of an economist or member of Congress in favor of this and then added, I think this is an idea [pause] well worth exploring [smile]. And then he is once again playing the moderate and the centrist, but also the person interested in finding positive ideas.
 
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My ATL for the Iowa Caucus held on Monday, Feb. 20, 1984 is as follows:

Mondale 27.1%

Jackson 26.3 %

Hart 19.2 %

uncommited 11.7 %

and the remaining votes to McGovern, Cranston, Glenn, Askew, and Hollings.
 
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in original timeline, the focus very much was on the deficit. People focused on kitchen table economics, rather than the fact that a modern economy is like a shark swimming forward and quarterly GDP is perhaps the most important.

Or one of several equally important numbers, for we're always trying to achieve multiple goals at once.

And then one or several PODs the Summer of 1983 which changes the national conversation, and Jesse catches this change of conversation just right.
 
so which PODs Summer of '83?

maybe a movie like Brassed Off (1996), only bigger and better,

maybe a book like The Reckoning (1986) by David Halberstam about the U.S. auto industry.
 
At first, people might think Jesse just wants a better deal for African-Americans.

But the second thing they find out is that he wants more middle-class jobs for all of us. And that's pretty appealing!
 
The Reckoning, David Halberstam, 1986, page 50:

https://books.google.com/books?id=n...mall truck with copies of the Sunday"&f=false

' . . . In 1982 the two out-of-town papers that sold best in Detroit were the two Houston papers, the Post and the Chronicle, bought eagerly by men desperate to study the help-wanted columns. One unemployed auto executive, seeking to keep himself afloat financially, started driving to Houston each weekend; there, on Saturday night, he loaded up his small truck with copies of the Sunday papers and then drove all night back to Detroit in order to get there first and sell his papers at highly inflated rates. . . '

page 51:

' . . . When a department store needing two hundred workers was ready to open, it too never had to advertise. Somehow the word got out that the company was ready to process applications, and eighteen hundred people showed up. . . '
If more of these stories circulated at the time, people might focus on more economic facts than simply the federal deficit.

And you'd almost hope a business leader would trot out the old tired claim that, People just don't want to work anymore. And then you could strongly respond to it with examples like this.

And yes, if you tweak the conversation just a little bit, I think the '84 Democratic primary would be a great time for a sensible economic populist.
 
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The Reckoning, David Halberstam, 1986, pages 54-55:

' . . . The postwar years, the immense material strength and physical might, two generations of unrivaled prosperity—it all had lulled America into thinking it had attained an economic utopia, a kind of guaranteed national prosperity, like a concession won in some marathon bargaining session with God, a guaranteed annual increase in the standard of living. In those few postwar decades, American had taken a temporary historical accident and construed it as a permanent condition. . . . '
Halberstam makes the case that cheap oil built the American middle class. And that this period had to end sometime, and was brought to an abrupt end with the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.

Another factor might be that America was the only major manufacturing power left after World War II.

Well, if there are economists and historians talking about this, Jesse mentions them. And he also talks about how the American Dream of our children doing better than ourselves still remains, and that there are other ways of being rich than mere material wealth. And we will push forward, striving for both goals and more.

He comes across as both realistic and optimistic.
 
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My ATL for the New Hampshire primary held on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 1984, is as follows:

Jackson 38.3%

Mondale 31.6%

Hart 16.7%

and the rest of the vote split between Glenn, McGovern, Askew, Cranston, and Hollings.
 
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I doubt that there were even enough people open to voting for Jackson in a general election at all whether it be 1984 or 1988. The racial factor was very powerful plus the fact that he is too left for the American electorate barring perhaps a second Great Depression.

Has the 2012 presidential election had the same demographics as OTL elections in 1984 or 1988, Obama's performance would've been better than Mondale's 1984 performance but somewhere closer around Carter's 1980 or Dukakis' 1988 performances OTL. With a 1976 or 1980 demographic makeup, Obama's 2012 performance would have been closer to McGovern's in 1972 but slightly better.

It is worth mentioning that in the 1980's, the people that came of age during the civil rights era were just getting to voting age and were a very small percentage of the voting population. By 2008, the remainder that had yet to reach voting age during the civil rights era had not only reached voting age but had entered early middle age which made them more likely to vote. Conversely, those that had come of age during the height of Jim Crow were dying off. This combined with Bush's disastrous performance plus Obama not being leftist (Tea Party whining aside) allowed him to win in 2008.

The question is this? Is there any confluence of factors that allows for a Bush vs. Jackson matchup where Bush wouldn't have 270+ electoral votes virtually guaranteed from the get go?

Y'all are ignoring Quebec Dave's demographic point. If Obama, probably the most charismatic politician of his generation, with his non-threatening post-racial vibe, and an extra 20 years of racial equality, and in the face of the worst economic catastrophe since the depression would still lose with 80s demographics, how the hell is Jesse Jackson supposed to win? Are we just going for the handwave?
 
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1984 was before the ramp up of the war on drugs. It was before what's called the conservative movement took on a mean edge, toward pretty much everything but including racially coded language.

So, I'm not sure we've made any net progress on racial equality during the last 30 years. (going ahead and counting both of President Obama's terms)
 
So rather than just normal Democratic talking points being a magic bullet for Jesse Jackson, what if someone actually pushes his campaign in a more effective aggressive direction. Namely if a more liberal Lee Atwater goes into S.C. Democratic politics and for whatever reason goes to work with Jackson. I still don't think Jackson +Atwater could win, but the pairing would be original, and given Atwater's skills probably somehow effective. Thoughts?
 
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