Jackson the Moderate

It’s a new ballgame for Jesse. He has catapulted into presidential front-runner status, with media coverage four times what it was before Hart’s fall. The fresh legitimacy of Jackson’s campaign is giving Democrats a case of terminal jitters. In fact, they see it as possibly torpedoing their plans to regain the White House in the post-Reagan era.

Besides being the only experienced player in the game, Jackson also holds a few other trump cards. The traditional black political bloc, painfully divided in 1984, is beginning to coalesce for 1988. Congressmen Charles Rangel of New York and Mickey Leland of Texas showed up at Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition convention last spring, as did big-city mayors Wilson Goode of Philadelphia and Richard Arrington of Birmingham. More black establishment figures are expected to follow, since the current crop of Democratic candidates includes no safe, Mondalesque option. True, Paul Simon has all the litmus liberal qualifications, but blacks, like other Democrats, are reluctant to pin their hopes on such an unrealistic longshot.

JM

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John McLaughlin

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Presidential Election

It’s a new ballgame for Jesse. He has catapulted into presidential front-runner status, with media coverage four times what it was before Hart’s fall. The fresh legitimacy of Jackson’s campaign is giving Democrats a case of terminal jitters. In fact, they see it as possibly torpedoing their plans to regain the White House in the post-Reagan era.

Besides being the only experienced player in the game, Jackson also holds a few other trump cards. The traditional black political bloc, painfully divided in 1984, is beginning to coalesce for 1988. Congressmen Charles Rangel of New York and Mickey Leland of Texas showed up at Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition convention last spring, as did big-city mayors Wilson Goode of Philadelphia and Richard Arrington of Birmingham. More black establishment figures are expected to follow, since the current crop of Democratic candidates includes no safe, Mondalesque option. True, Paul Simon has all the litmus liberal qualifications, but blacks, like other Democrats, are reluctant to pin their hopes on such an unrealistic longshot.