President Jesse Jackson, 1988

White working class voters are not going to vote for Jesse Jackson.

Tell that to Jackson supporter Jim Hightower (ex-Texas Agriculture Secretary.)
Jackson was treated as a fringe candidate...until he won states in 1984.

And if you want to define me as non-white, go ahead; there were plenty of people early in the 20th century who would if they knew I had Sicilian and perhaps even for my Polish ancestry.

The whole Catholic thing would probably have been the deal-breaker for these particular bigots. And some generations before that, Methodism (two generations of men on my father's side converted for the privilege of marrying my grandmother and great-grandmother...respectively).

Personally I've come to think of "white" in the American context as meaning "I have accepted a pact to forget about where my ancestors actually came from in return for a ticket to membership in a nation that defines itself by racism."

But honestly I think I'm about as "white" as they come.

As for working class--if you want to define me out of the working class because I darn well would and did support Jackson, fine. Please tell my creditors they can stop expecting me to go on paying them 'cause if I don't work, I sure don't have any other assets to give them!

kthnxsbai!
 
I agree, (although Wilder was not quite a complete conservative Democrat as he was pro-choice an ddidn't hide the issue).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Wilder

He actually dabbled a little bit with running for President 1992. I seem to recall on paper he was the ideal candidate, but that he had trouble with focus groups once they learned his ethnicity. I think I read that in Germond's book on the 1992 election.

HES BLACK? He looks super white.
 
If Jackson somehow got the Dem nomination... I won't call that impossible, however unlikely it is, Bush would landslide him as badly as Reagan landslided Carter.
No. Bush won more of the vote than Reagan did in 1980. This would be 1972 all over again.
Blackfox nailed the thread.
 
Although race would have been a factor the main reason Jackson never would have won is his platform was very far to the left, well out of the mainstream.
 
Although race would have been a factor the main reason Jackson never would have won is his platform was very far to the left, well out of the mainstream.

:rolleyes:I was wondering if someone was going to mention that.

I vaguely recall reading a article about a questionaire that the candidates took.

And Jackson was w-a-y out of the pack. To the far left.
 
:rolleyes:I was wondering if someone was going to mention that.

I vaguely recall reading a article about a questionaire that the candidates took.

And Jackson was w-a-y out of the pack. To the far left.

Well, that was certainly the point of my supporting him!

Lefter=smarter IMHO.

We didn't seriously think we'd win, we hoped we'd improve the dialog.

And as Harry Truman said, "give 'em a choice between a Republican and a Republican and they'll vote for the Republican every time."

I have to admit that I'd characterize the winning Democratic Presidents of my lifetime (Carter, Clinton, Obama) as kinder, smarter Republicans. (LBJ was already President when I was born but I don't remember him personally). I still think the superiority of heart and brains is worth backing. With Jackson '88 we were shooting for the Moon.

Now if he could have won the nomination in the first place--then our calculations would be rather different, wouldn't they?

If Jackson could have won the nomination, I'd account for it by saying that large numbers of potential voters who generally don't vote at all were waking up and finding someone speaking for them at last, and at the same time he was convincing sufficient numbers of more "moderate" voters that he was making sense for them too. That's what I think an actually operating democracy might look like.

That was the hope. If not in '88, that by '92 or later we'd be thinking more deeply and less reflexively, less myopically. Changing the "mainstream."

I do believe Dukakis would have done better if he'd made it clear he intended to govern differently than Reagan, rather than merely claiming to be "more competent."
 
And if you want to define me as non-white, go ahead; there were plenty of people early in the 20th century who would if they knew I had Sicilian and perhaps even for my Polish ancestry.

The whole Catholic thing would probably have been the deal-breaker for these particular bigots. And some generations before that, Methodism (two generations of men on my father's side converted for the privilege of marrying my grandmother and great-grandmother...respectively).

Personally I've come to think of "white" in the American context as meaning "I have accepted a pact to forget about where my ancestors actually came from in return for a ticket to membership in a nation that defines itself by racism."

But honestly I think I'm about as "white" as they come.

As for working class--if you want to define me out of the working class because I darn well would and did support Jackson, fine. Please tell my creditors they can stop expecting me to go on paying them 'cause if I don't work, I sure don't have any other assets to give them!

kthnxsbai!

You might very well be the exception, but I'm sorry, the general American white working class person (the majority of the American electorate) is not going to pull the lever for a candidate that favors racial quotas and is solidly in the left-liberal tradition of George McGovern.

And beyond that, I think it's funny to say that Jim Hightower is WWC. He might have been before he got elected to a state-level position, but political office is hardly a part of the 'working class'. Jackson is too liberal to ever be elected President. Period. I agree with him on a lot of things, and I'd probably have voted for him myself in the primary but only if it looked like he had no shot at actually winning the primary, but that's something different entirely from actual electability.

To take a modern example, Dennis Kucinich's policies might do wonders for working class voters, but Dennis Kucinich comes across as a 1960s left-liberal more than he does a 1930s New Deal liberal. The public is wild about the latter, not so much about the former because social progressivism typically doesn't capture the vast majority of the electorate (or even the Democratic Party), which tend to be socially conservative and fiscally liberal.
 

wormyguy

Banned
Plumber means that 1988, Jesse Jackson vs. (presumably) George H. W. Bush would be a major landslide in favor of Bush, due to probable missteps and poor campaigning by Jackson.

Like 1972 was a major landslide in favor of Nixon.

And I mean that 72 would look close compared to Democratic nominee Jackson.
 
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