”He is a candidate who earns every vote he gets,” Lance said. ”Those are all pro votes. He is not the beneficiary of `against` votes. You measure a pitcher`s performance by an earned run average (ERA). If you measured a politician`s by an earned vote average, he would have a great ERA.”
Jackson addressed the issue bluntly.
”Lot of talk these days about electability,” Jackson thundered to audience after audience. ”Well, what are the qualifications to be president? You need to be old enough, American enough, and a leader.
”And I`m all three.”
That might be the promise of the Constitution and the rote of civics books, his critics would say, but reality is another matter. There were simply too many white borders and barriers.
Victories aside, Jackson still faced the big, white buts. But, Jesse is not electable. But, what does Jesse want? No, but what does he really want?
But, he can`t win because of arithmetic and attitudes.
Blacks in particular recognized the code and quickly broke it: Jackson couldn`t win because he`s black.
With each election achievement-nearly double-digit percentage in Iowa, second-place finishes in Maine, Minnesota and Vermont-so-called experts quickly tried to dilute his success. Then came Super Tuesday, and Jackson, riding with nearly unanimous support among blacks, came north leading in popular votes and a close second in national convention delegates.
The campaign moved to Illinois, where Jackson has never really been accepted as a national leader, and he finished a distant second to Sen. Paul Simon, 31 percent to Simon`s 43 percent, but well ahead of Dukakis.
White voters, led by state Democratic Party leaders, marched in great numbers to ensure Simon`s victory. Jackson received about 8 percent of the white vote, still a prophet without honor in his hometown.
But he wasn`t stopped. Then he pulled off a shocker by winning the Michigan caucuses. Again, many tried to say it wasn`t a real victory, or an unimportant one. It was clear that the white majority, and people who consider themselves the Democratic Party`s powers that be, were not equipped to deal with his success.
”After Michigan, the message sent out was to stop taking him lightly and start taking him seriously,” Morris said. ”And the other message was `Wow, this is possible.` ”
After that victory, the but Jackson had been waiting for almost the entire campaign finally came. But, what could a President Jackson do, he was asked. But, how would a President Jackson address the issues.
Timing. A campaign that grew even faster than the candidate himself had expected. A quandary for a white-dominated media to take him seriously. Newsweek magazine wrestled with the issue on its cover within three weeks, going from from ”What Jesse Jackson Wants” to ”Can He Win?”
His crowds began to grow. By the thousands, nearly all white faces in Wisconsin stood on farms, town streets, and sat in armories and churches to hear him. Nearly 25 percent of them voted for him. ”I think he`s got guts,” said Tom Boe, who runs a central Wisconsin farm supply store. ”People can relate to Jesse because Jesse came from a poor background and today there`s a depressed rural economy. He`s been there. He`s walked in their shoes.”
Wisconsin`s enormous crowds lifted Jackson`s expectations and caused him to really reflect on the possibility of winning the nomination. All these white people were actually listening.
Well after midnight in the banquet room of the Ramada Inn in La Crosse, Wis., Jackson, dressed in a down vest after 18 hours of campaigning, munched on tuna fish and crackers and dispensed his assessment of race relations in America.
”Archie Bunker has changed,” he said.
It was not the reality the party power structure had in their collective minds. Historic firsts never are. They are a product of chance, of timing, of need and of a cause. They are also the product of unity.
His message and his style made the difference, Maslin said. ”What essentially happened in 1988 is that Jesse Jackson began to work within the system and he began to succeed in it,” Maslin said. ”I don`t think there`s any going back.”
The impact of his campaign can been seen most vividly in voter participation levels. In 1984, the rate of participation among blacks began to be greater than that of whites in primaries.
”Black people look at electoral politics quite differently from most other citizens,” Morris said. ”They look at it as part of a movement for justice on their behalf so that what we saw in Chicago when Harold Washington first won was talked about as the movement.”
Why Jackson? As one who was sharply criticized by King`s followers for his claims that King died in his arms when he knew that was patently untrue, only Jackson has emerged as a politician of real national stature. Others have achieved status on local levels and have held federal offices, but none is as well-known or well-received by crowds of all colors as Jackson.
A generation has grown up seeing Jackson on television; before the 1988 campaign began, his name recognition was nearly twice that of most of his rivals. And he had a history.
”He is connected to the legacy of the civil rights movement, so he is naturally seen as an extension of the movement,” Morris said.
As Morris and others see it, mainstream white politicians underestimated Jackson from the start, in part because they are so out of touch with blacks in the United States and in part because they have taken the black vote for granted for so long.
”White Democrats saw themselves as the natural heirs to the black votes,” Morris said. ”What Jesse Jackson did in 1984 was to prove to white Democrats that there was no inherent reason to assume the black vote was theirs.”
Morris also said Jackson has been successful on a national scale because he has remained independent of the traditional Democratic Party power structure, unlike Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley or Detroit Mayor Coleman Young.
”He has carved out his leadership as a leader of black people in America,” Morris said.
Jackson has extended his influence in various ways, including providing the vehicle to foster a new generation of black political professionals on the presidential level. Thomas Cavanagh, a political scientist with the National Academy of Sciences, sees this as one of the most important outgrowths of the campaign, one that should help minority candidates trying to win statewide offices as well as local races.
”It`s like what Jackson says in his speeches, that `I`ve taken the lids off dreams and we`re winning every day,` ” said Delmarie Cobb, Jackson`s press secretary, participating in her first national campaign.
It hasn`t always worked. After Jackson`s 1984 campaign, F.D. Reese, the prinicpal at Selma`s East Side Middle School, decided to challenge Joe Smitherman for mayor. Smitherman, criticized for his efforts to stop marches in Selma in the 1960s, defeated Reese despite Selma having a black majority. Even in defeat, Reese said Jackson has been inspirational and has given people a true sense that they can make it. And this year, the impact is much greater. Around the country, the campaign has driven people to participate on local levels. ”What we`re seeing in Oklahoma is that our party is starting to open up the process,” Felder said. ”The Democratic Party here had been run by all white men from rural areas. Now for the first time, minorities are getting involved in the political process.”
Progress has not come without a price. Felder said that her company, Capitol Town Automotive in Oklahoma City, was burned two days before a Jackson campaign appearance in her city. And several campaign workers were threatened over the phone.
In the early 1970s, Jackson, trying to open up Chicago`s trade unions to blacks, never seemed to tire telling reporters the story of the screwdriver and the light switch. Black children, he argued, never had anyone to show them how to use a screwdriver, so how could they be expected to know how to fix a light switch?
The story spoke to the issue of role models and white attitudes. How can you know how to do something when you`ve never seen it done? Minority children now have a role model for running for the nation`s highest office.
”When a national figure like that comes in and can make such statements and they see firsthand this man who did rise to a point that he is being considered for the highest office in the land, what greater hope can be imbedded in the minds and hearts of minority students?” Reese said.
For all the good things generated by Jackson`s campaign, for all the evidence of how far its shows the nation has come, it also has shown how far the country has to go. Resentment and racism, overt and veiled, still permeate much of the thinking of the voting public.
”The mere fact that the Democratic Party had to be on guard about what to do speaks to race relations,” Morris said. ”It once again reveals the mere fact that a lot of people were questioning whether a black person could be elected president of the United States. It says society is still characterized very much by racism.”
In that sense, Jackson`s 1988 campaign has offered promises, and raised problems, that the Democratic Party has not had to face since Reconstruction. It has been presented with the result of years of its own rhetoric about the importance of civil rights, in the form of a strong black candidate who represents one of the most valuable and dependable factions in Democratic politics.
That reality will be very much in evidence when the Democrats hold their July convention in Atlanta, where, surrounded by the history of the civil rights movement, they will decide how to receive the strongest black presidential candidacy in history.
Tuesday: A difficult decision.
