Those of us who were backing Jesse in '88 (and I was one of them, I did a lot of canvassing for him in the primary, and then a lot of canvassing for Dukakis in the general--people who suggest Jackson and his supporters were not trying their damnedest to get some Democrat elected that year are just plain wrong, I'm personally here to tell you) knew very well he wasn't even going to win the Democratic primary, let alone win in November.
We did work hard to raise our numbers as much as possible; the LA Times the day of the primary predicted we'd get 10 percent in California--we got 20.
The point was to interject a different and more progressive voice into the debate, perhaps get Jesse considered for VP or some other office in a new Democratic administration.
My personal turning point, from merely thinking it was cool the man would try and just voting for him in the primary, to finding the HQ and hitting the streets on his behalf, was in-depth articles in the LA Times based on interviews with the Dem candidates on various issues, including foreign policy. Jackson broke distinctively from the bi-partisan "consensus" in a way I considered intelligent and hopeful. Trying to get mind and heart on the same integral page sort of describes my personal program; Jackson came closer than any so-called "mainstream" candidate.
As for Dukakis, I for one had not heard of him a year before the election. Certainly in retrospect, I don't see how one can claim he was more "electable" than Jackson was. That didn't stop me from trying in the fall though!
Given the nature of Bush's victory that year, I'd say the only prayer the Democrats had would have been to make themselves as distinct from the Republicans as possible, to point out that the country was in many ways very much on the wrong track and a new start with a clean slate would be the only way to go. That's what I thought going in, in the wake of the whole Contragate mess and general economic discontent I thought we had a real chance to wake up many people who normally don't vote and win over substantial numbers of people who generally do. And looking back on it I still regret that we didn't though I better understand how the mainstream Democratic party bigwigs could scarcely adopt such a line, let alone follow through on it.
So in retrospect, if one addresses the deep reasons why the Democrats in general failed to adopt a more radically progressive line, I do think if Jackson's sort of views could prevail in the primary and in the platform, then we'd have had a better chance of winning than with any of what the press was then calling "the Seven Dwarves" of the Democratic primary "mainstream."
