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

Quebec_Dave

Banned
This seems like the key hinge point. Bush is going to agree with Atwater given the reality of so little time. Reagan is going to feel played and betrayed.

I agree. It will also tarnish Reagan's legacy as a tragic figure that got the crown at too late in the game and conservative would be wondering what if he had won in 1976 or 1968 during his halcyon days. I think it will also make people much more leery about electing septuagenarians to public office. I could see the amendment proposed by Biden in my earlier post gaining steam and possibly getting ratified. I have to admit I kind of chose Biden as the sponsor of the joint resolution (Constitutional amendments are introduced in Congress as a joint resolution) due to his OTL flirtation with running this year despite being 73 years old.

Of course the Jackson presidency butterflies away all subsequent presidential campaigns. Most people who ran in any election since 1988 would either not run or their campaigns would take a totally different trajectory.

Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, it would be interesting if we could see archive video from alternate timelines. I would love to see the look on Reagan's face when he is endorsing Bush in the Rose Garden. The only reason Bush wouldn't be worried of a last minute counter betrayal is because Nancy gets to be drug czar.

After getting Bush to play Judas and losing to a guy that was supposed to be a pushover, I could see Atwater and his attack politics being discredited. As Jackson gains in the polls, Atwater will go so negative that everything except the N-word will be used. This will likely help contribute to the write-in votes for Reagan, the protest votes for Bergland and lots of people staying home in November.
 
. . . The Right claims all cultural icons as their own, especially those they have least title to, and like a bully smirks and defies the left to do a damn thing about it. . .
Yes, I have wondered about this, too. But this can change, especially since these fat cats seem bound and determined to destroy the American middle class, or at the very least aren't too creative in finding better alternatives.

Alright, let's say the rank and file of the unions start rising up in a real insurgent movement. They say to union leadership, we'll do the book learning, and then we want to tour Germany, Japan, and England ourselves and see how they do it.

And when the union holds public meetings back home, they comfortably display an American flag, as I think they tend to do anyway.
 
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Jackso would outperform Mondale's performance (which isn't hard to do) and perhaps even Dukakis' 1988 performance. I could see him parlaying such a relative success into a run for Illinois governor in 1986 and possibly winning. Illinois doesn't have term limits for its governors so he could get re-elected in 1990 and 1994 and run in either 1992, 1996 or 2000 depending on the party in the White House and how popular the incumbent is or isn't. If Jackson can show real results in Illinois and combine that with some foreign policy experience with some of his peace missions he undertook in real life, he could parlay that into actual establishment support.
As a third separate timeline, I like this one, too. :)
 
But I still like my original timeline -- a populist economic movement, which Jesse respectfully under-leads. Again, he's engaged but moderate. And his 20 years experience as a community activist very much plays to strength.

This alone is enough to beat a fully functional Ronnie Reagan.

And with enough of a populist movement, some Reagan Democrats are even voting for Jackson. Try them!
 
The Reckoning, David Halberstam, 1986.

page 607:

' . . . Thus began the real education of Joel Goddard, . . . '

page 656:

' . . . Somewhat to his surprise, he became one of the leaders of the movement to accept the agreement. He tried to describe to his fellow workers what had happened to him in the most personal terms and to convince them that it might happen again. This factory, he told them, is right in the line of fire of the new world economy; we workers are an endangered species. One of the factors that influenced the workers' decision was Ford's promise to spend $10 million on new die-making machinery . . . '

' . . . but when they arrived, he decided they were junk. That they also happened to be Japanese junk angered many of the men even more. They were furious that Ford had bought these machines from the Japanese after it had made its great case against the Japanese and had enlisted the help of the union in seeking domestic-content legislation and voluntary restrictions from the Japanese. The workers felt it smacked of hypocrisy, . . . '

page 657:

' . . . The brief period of artificial prosperity ended in late 1985 when the voluntary restrictions on Japanese cars were relaxed. As Datsuns and Toyotas started flooding the country again, the increased demand of the last four years for American cars fell off, and so, of course, did production at Rawsonville. There were layoffs, but since the number of plant workers could not dip below the 2625 who were employed at the time of the PEG agreement, 500 men who would normally have been laid off were channeled into community service. They were guaranteed a minimum salary of thirty-two hours a week at their regular Ford wage. . . '
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' . . . He remained somewhat uneasy about his job. The plant had stabilized by early 1986; the men who had been lent to different social service institutions under the PEG agreement had been called back. But it was a plant under constant pressure from foreign competition, both Asian and Mexican, and the very existence of that competition had all but neutralized the union, which operated now, if not out of weakness, then certainly out of acute vulnerability. Beyond that, it was a plant with an old work force. There were no young workers; they had all been let off. Joel Goddard, much to his surprise, looked around one day and decided that, at forty, he was one of the youngest men in the plant. . . '
I read this book years ago and think it's excellent.

I'm re-reading parts of it.
 
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from 2008:


UAW activist Gregg Shotwell is saying:

We in the United States need an industrial policy like other countries.

National health care would reduce fixed costs for auto companies. And so would stronger government pensions.

We in the United States subsidize outsourcing, whereas other countries erect trade barriers.

We spend more on managerial salaries and supervisory salaries than do Germany and Japan.

=======

I may not necessarily agree with everything Gregg is saying, but this could have been part of a much bigger conversation in the early '80s.
 
And to the question, if there was such a populist movement, why would Jesse be the only candidate to effectively engage with it, to get out in front of it even if he's leading in a centrist fashion?

Good question.

But, there was a political moment for education reform and I don't think any of the Democratic candidates really engaged with it. Not effectively. (and the political perception of Mondale was quite to the contrary)

The President's National Commission on Excellence in Education released their report entitled A Nation at Risk on April 26, 1983.

I think an excerpt of Pres. Reagan accepting the report:

Pres. Reagan's radio address on Saturday, April 30, 1983:

Ronnie goes through a lot of his usual talking points, including a mention of vouchers about 4:25 into it.

Toward the end around 5:25, he says, "I would like to close with a special challenge to America's students, who may think I just want to pile on more homework. . . " To me, that's kind of Ronnie Reagan at his best. :)
 
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