A Dream Deferred for the Jackson Faction

Salim Muwakkil, in coverage for In These Times, made a similar assessment, writing that while many of Jackson’s followers ​“are more comfortable agitating or deriding conventional political wisdom,” Jackson ​“managed to harmonize most of those discordant notes.” Almost 40 years later, as once-outsider politicians like Zohran Mamdani — now the first Muslim mayor of New York City — attempt to carve out space within the political mainstream, we return to Muwakkil’s words on the costs and opportunities of movement institutionalization and ​“political maturity.”

In 1988, Salim Muwakkil wrote:

For those Jackson delegates whose journey to Atlanta was fueled by their candidate’s populist passions or the possibility of a Black vice president, the convention’s outcome was just another dream deferred. But for many other Jackson delegates, the convention represented an important stage in their movement toward political maturity. ​“We have been looking at the White House, the state house and all the others as their house,” said Rev. Willie Barrow, a Jackson delegate and executive director of Operation PUSH. ​“But for the first time we’re beginning to see that we are inside of the house.“

The politics of inclusion is the new theme of Jackson’s ongoing campaign. It’s an odd theme for some of his more fervent followers, many of whom are more comfortable agitating or deriding conventional political wisdom. But Jackson has managed to harmonize most of those discordant notes.

“In some ways, Atlanta was a tour de force for Jackson,” said Roger Wilkins, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. ​“He worked out an agreement with top Democrats allowing for more input from his progressive spectrum into the policy and process of the party. And he still managed to keep his rather restless coalition together.” The success of such an inside-outside strategy requires extraordinary powers of communication, however, and even Jackson may not be up to the task.

​“I have to tarnish some of those images of Democratic unity at the convention, but I sensed a lot of discontent from Jackson delegates,” said Illinois delegate Robert Starks, a longtime Jackson supporter. ​“I have no doubt that the Palestinian self-determination and the tax-the-wealthy platforms would have passed,” he added. ​“I’m pretty sure we could have carried Jesse for vice president if he had let it come up for a vote.“

The desire for — or perhaps the smell of — a November victory is melding Democrats from across the ideological spectrum into a single-minded entity. While such a development epitomizes the ​“umbrella” ideal of the two-party system, how does it help address the needs so graphically presented during the Jackson campaign?

Jackson has emerged from the convention weaker and stronger. He’s weaker because his bluff is empty: although Jackson had no conceivable option but to support the Democratic ticket, he bargained on the bluff that he might bolt the party. But since it is his constituency that would bear the inordinate burden of another Republican administration, a Jackson defection clearly was unlikely.

He’s stronger because he’s expanded his power base, debuted a mediagenic family and begun the process of institutionalizing his wing of the Democratic Party. Aside from his political significance, the Jackson saga is truly historic. Not since Booker T. Washington has an African-American loomed so large in the public square. Jackson’s far-flung social concerns, his eloquence and intelligence, his intimate connection to black America’s religious core culture and his readiness to confront the white man on his own turf, has endeared him to the black community. And within that community, Jackson may very well be the most popular figure in history.