Query: A Different "Jesse Jackson"

Alright, I know that I'm probably phrasing this oddly so I apologize for any confusion. While Jesse Jackson never really had a chance to actually win the Presidency, he, arguably, was the first African American to mount a halfway credible campaign for the Presidency. So basically my question is if there is any way to have some other African American seek the Democratic nomination in 1984 and/or 1988. Note, I'm not saying that said candidate should win either the nomination or the election. However, the candidate should do at least as well as Jackson himself did in the primaries.

So who might this imaginary candidate be?
 
Hmmm... maybe have Edward Brooke win reelection to the Senate from Massachusetts in 1978. From there, he challenges George H.W. Bush as the standard bearer of what remains of the liberal faction of the Republican Party in 1988. A large number of African-Americans crossover to vote for him.
 
Al Gore goes all-in on the Horton issue despite the Democratic Party establishment flipping out. Dukakis is destroyed. Jackson takes it.

Tom Bradley is elected Governor of CA in 1982.

That's probably the best starting point for 1988. Especially because that would probably prevent Jackson from attempting a bid and if Cuomo stays out as he did IOTL Bradley is automatically the liberal standard-bearer.
 
Muskie is the Democrat nominee in 1972 (loses maybed 56-44) Less fear of nominating a progressived.

Unbossed and Unbought Shirley Chisolm looks very attractive in 1976
 
The thing about Jesse Jackson in the 1980s was, he wasn't just an African-American candidate; he was what passed for the standard bearer of seriously progressive politics in that decade--what passes for a Left in this country.

And when I saw the post title, with Jackson's name in quote marks, I wondered if that was what the OP meant--WI someone other than Jackson led a strong challenge to the Democratic mainstream from the left?

As I see it the whole problem of US politics in the '80s was that "vision," the mythic part of a political program that gives people a strong sense of what they are campaigning for, was largely monopolized by the Right. People had little positive sense of what they were voting for if they supported a Democrat, just what they were voting against. In opposition to the quasi-Randian ideology of the Republicans, wrapped up in red white and blue and talking tough, the Democrats could not articulate the different worldview in which the Republicans were not the only sane persons, despite what looked to me like overt and painful examples of Republican insanity that hurt the vast majority of citizens quite obviously and directly. (And fears that the same misplaced sort of cowboy rhetoric could easily lead straight to nuclear war and Armageddon).

Really this is a problem Democrats have suffered from at least since the aftermath of the 1972 election.

Jackson was a rare exception, someone who stood up and said what sort of alternative America he was for, one that addressed the bread-and-butter issues of the vast majority.

While we progressive types (I was one, being heavily involved in Jackson's '88 primary bid in Pasadena, California, as a volunteer canvasser) won few really impressive victories, we were a force to be reckoned with, enough so that I believe that Jackson got his traction as a sort of national figure as much from progressives finding an outlet and spokesman as from galvanizing African-American support.

Now, would just any African-American politician of any party have been able to do that? I suspect a moderate Democrat might have. Not a "moderate" Republican unless he so much repudiated the platform of Reagan-era Republicanism his status as any kind of Republican would seem absurd.

Even if we assume then that just any of these alternative African American politicians could have gotten exactly as many African-American votes as Jackson got OTL, it isn't clear he'd get as many non-African votes as Jackson did.
 
The thing about Jesse Jackson in the 1980s was, he wasn't just an African-American candidate; he was what passed for the standard bearer of seriously progressive politics in that decade--what passes for a Left in this country.

And when I saw the post title, with Jackson's name in quote marks, I wondered if that was what the OP meant--WI someone other than Jackson led a strong challenge to the Democratic mainstream from the left?

snip

While we progressive types (I was one, being heavily involved in Jackson's '88 primary bid in Pasadena, California, as a volunteer canvasser) won few really impressive victories, we were a force to be reckoned with, enough so that I believe that Jackson got his traction as a sort of national figure as much from progressives finding an outlet and spokesman as from galvanizing African-American support.

I absolutely agree with that point, which is half the reason the Democratic establishment was desperate to stop him. Which is why I suggested Gore takes out the bridges on Dukakis. The aftershocks doom Gore and leaves Jackson the nominee.

If the question is an articulate progressive critique of "New Democrats" and the GOP's policies combined with an actual vision for the Democratic Party, then the answer is Mario Cuomo. Who would have won the nomination.
 
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