Symmetry and the Preachers of 1988

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under way.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is endorsing Bernie Sanders. As I describe in After Reagan, Sanders started his political career as an independent socialist and did not take part in Democratic Party politics until caucusing for Jackson in Vermont during the 1988 campaign.  During the primaries that year, African American voters sided with Jackson over Dukakis -- and it would be the last time to date that a candidate won the nomination without first winning the African American vote.

In 1988, another man of the cloth made a serious run for president: Pat Robertson.  Though he resigned from the ministry in 1987 to tamp down church-state issues, he was a leader of the religious right.  As I also explain in After Reagan, the campaign of George H.W. Bush recognized the growing power of Christian conservatives and co-opted enough of their support in order to blunt the Robertson surge.  The GOP then absorbed the movement, which effectively gained a veto on the party's nomination, just as African Americans gained a veto on the Democratic nomination.

African Americans and religious conservatives have a strong streak of pragmatism.  In 2016, evangelicals passed over genuine coreligionists (e.g., Huckabee and Cruz) to embrace a biblical illiterate because the latter offered them a surer path to power.  In 2020, African Americans did not rally behind credible African American candidates (Booker, Harris, and Patrick), instead siding with white Catholic Joe Biden.

And just as Jackson is endorsing Sanders, Kamala Harris is endorsing Biden:

.@JoeBiden has served our country with dignity and we need him now more than ever. I will do everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/DbB2fGWpaa

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) March 8, 2020

Trump and Jesse Jackson

In Defying the Odds, we trace Trump's outsiderism to earlier figures. As I mentioned in a previous post, Elizabeth Drew's Election Journal, I came across this passage, which sounds as if it could apply to Trump.

For a large portion of [his] supporters and would-be supporters, whether his proposals stand up to scrutiny is irrelevant. Their support for him is in a different category -- as the leader of a movement. [He] has become the vehicle for their discontent -- with current policies, with the other candidates. He stands in bold, interesting contrast to some fairly dull candidates. He is the anti-politics candidate. Measuring his program is linear, rational, while most of the support for him is based on emotion.

In this case, the candidate was ... Jesse Jackson. The comparison is less bizarre than it may seem at first. Like Trump was also a morally-compromised leader with deep prejudices and a disregard for factual accuracy Jackson was an sought adulation for himself while giving voice to the inchoate frustrations of large group of Americans who thought that the system was rigged against them. In the book, we quote Jackson's description of his followers: "My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised."

Stanley Greenberg and Nancy Zdunkewicz write at Democracy Corps:

Trump voters complain that there is no respect for President Trump or for people like them who voted for him. One older white working class woman from Macomb recalled when she first started voting “there was so much respect for the president. And I don't care what he did, or what he said, there was always respect. It was always ‘Mr. President.’ And now, it disgusts me.”

Sanders and Jackson

Like Jesse Jackson in 1988, outsider Bernie Sanders is going to seek various concessions from the Democratic Party's nominee. At RealClearPolitics, Richard Benedetto writes:

Sanders and Jackson are kindred spirits and go way back in their friendship. Sanders, then mayor of Burlington, Vt., was one of the few white elected officials to endorse Jackson for president, first in in 1984 and again in 1988.

“We are going to give our support to a candidate for president who has done more than any other candidate in living memory to bring together the disenfranchised, the hungry, the poor, the workers who are being thrown out of their decent-paying jobs and the farmers who are being thrown off of their lands,” Sanders said when he endorsed Jackson in 1988.

Sound familiar?

Jackson, recalling those days, had high praise for Sanders last month in a Huffington Post podcast, “Candidate Confessional.”

“In many ways, Bernie is running the Jackson campaign,” Jackson said, “with much more money and today’s technology and much more coverage in so many ways. As we sought to broaden the base, many whites would support us but were afraid to face other whites — these cultural walls and fears. Bernie supported us in ’84 and ’88.”

Which 1988 Candidate Foreshadowed Trump?

I am writing a book about the 1988 presidential election.  Reading Elizabeth Drew's Election Journal, I came across this passage, which sounds as if it could apply to Trump.

For a large portion of [his] supporters and would-be supporters, whether his proposals stand up to scrutiny is irrelevant. Their support for him is in a different category -- as the leader of a movement. [He] has become the vehicle for their discontent -- with current policies, with the other candidates. He stands in bold, interesting contrast to some fairly dull candidates.  He is the anti-politics candidate. Measuring his program is linear, rational, while most of the support for him is based on emotion.

In this case, the candidate was ... Jesse Jackson.  

The comparison is less bizarre than it may seem at first.  Like Trump, Jackson was an outsider, a narcissist seeking adulation for himself while giving voice to the inchoate frustrations of large group of Americans who thought that the system was rigged against them.  He was also a morally-compromised leader with deep prejudices and a disregard for factual accuracy.