In 1984, I became the health adviser to Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign after Dr Quentin Young, one of my best friends and a well-known progressive physician in Chicago, suggested that the three of us meet. Quentin knew Jesse very well. Besides serving as Jesse’s personal physician, Quentin had developed a close working relationship with Jackson. Jesse had (and has) a very engaging personality, and Quentin was known for his persuasiveness. I accepted their proposal to advise Jesse in the Democratic Party primaries — an experience that became my baptism of fire in American politics (I had arrived in 1965 as a political exile from Franco’s Spain).
I had total loyalty to Jesse Jackson. He was, and remains, one of the most articulate leaders I have ever known, among the many that I have advised in many countries. But I was not convinced his strategy would lead him to the White House in 1984. Competing with Walter Mondale (close to former Vice President Hubert Humphrey), Jackson ran as (and was perceived as) the voice of racial minorities and the excluded, demanding to be recognized as part of the Democratic Party — a very necessary task, but different than aspiring to be president of the United States.
The New York Times loved it, and wrote an editorial that not even Jesse’s mother would have written, putting him on a pedestal. My worry was that his strategy would not gain him the broad support needed to become president — those who were not minorities or did not feel discriminated against would not vote for him. My impression was that although Jackson ran for president, he did not believe he could become president. He thought the United States was not ready for a black president. I disagreed. But with his strategy, emphasizing the voice of the minorities and the excluded, he obtained only a minority of the delegates in the Democratic Convention.
In 1988, Jackson ran a different campaign. He pitched himself as the voice of the working class (although without using the phrase, a forbidden term in the language of US politics). He spoke of “working families,” putting great emphasis on the need to unite different sectors of society and progressive social movements. Adding up the different sectors — black, white, and other races — we were the majority of the popular classes: the Rainbow Coalition. We emphasized universal policies in his proposals, such as a National Health Program that would guarantee health care not only for black people and the poor, but for everyone else, i.e. the majority of the people.
When, in the 1988 campaign, Jesse came to Baltimore (at that time a steel town), journalists would ask him, “How are you going to get the support of the white steelworker?” He would answer: “By making him [the majority were men] aware that he has more in common with the black steelworker, because they are both workers, than he does with the boss because they are white.” Social class was the underlying theme, and universality (establishing access to health care as a right) was the guiding principle. This time, the New York Times wrote a nasty editorial warning that Jesse would destroy the United States.