[8 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1988 reprinting the portions…]

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8 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1988 reprinting the portions below as an example of criticisms of Jesse Jackson's campaign that are expressed by some forces in the Black community.

The City Sun has observed and pondered Jesse Jackson's presidential race for months. After weeks of agonizing, sometimes heated, internal debate, we have come to a conclusion we are sure would anger many: We do not endorse any of Jesse Jackson's opponents in the primary and we do not here repeat the ringing endorsement we gave him in 1984.

Our disenchantment with Jesse Jackson stems from what we see as a clearcut abandonment of his political ideals for the expediency of the moment and, more profoundly, the setting aside of an agenda he had enunciated in 1984 that spoke primarily, not exclusively, to Third World people.

The thing he's trying to prove in 1988 was proven beyond a reasonable doubt back then: There is a large, growing population that is shut out of the mainstream-most of them Third world people-who can and want to be organized so that they can mount a political counteroffensive to the oppressive circumstances that end up governing their lives.

Jackson's spectacular showing in 1984—he commanded the Black vote nationwide—proved the idea had tremendous merit. Instead of building on that idea in 1988 and installing the Rainbow as a political reality in every state that could sustain his and others' candidacies, we came to know that Jackson intended to run again-but as a full-fledged Democrat.

The man who excoriated the Democratic Party's policies in 1984 are white political establishment—that was a given-but the Black political establishment as well. Today in major cities with significant Black populations, the Black political establishment—to some extent, the white power structure—is now firmly entrenched in the Jackson campaign.

In New York City, for example, many of the people closest to the Jackson campaign were the unapologetic protectors of the status quo, the folks who in the wave of grass-roots protests and movements voluntarily placed themselves between the people's quest for justice and the system's unwillingness to give it.

What would a politically correct Jesse Jackson be doing with these people so close to him? What message does he think he's sending to Black New York?

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... Democrats (continued from page 1: “Israel's iron fist fails to roll back Palestinian uprising”)

become a political hostage in 1988, trying to win white approval at the expense of the broader Black imperatives that should have guided him—and us—all along," The City Sun noted in its April 13-19 issue.

"If winning means having to yield on principles, having to toe the line, then being a loser is a far more honorable alternative."

Jackson's "number-one goal"

Jackson is the first to admit that his "maverick" days are over. "I'm in the center," he said on ABC television before the New York primary. "My number-one goal is the victory of the Democratic Party."

For that statement, a large portion of the party's "prime movers" are shaking his hand. "Jackson is not giving a liberal or radical message," former Democratic National Chairman John C. White says. "He's giving a traditional Democratic Party message."

Faced with an increasingly disenfranchised and sceptical electorate, the Democratic leaders see Jackson's civilrights background and populist slogans as their ace-in-the-hole to entice new voters onto the party rolls.

Jackson boasts that he has been responsible for registering 2 million people into the Democratic Party. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo heartily agrees. "Jesse is a very important person for this party," Cuomo said. "His Black votes made me governor."

Guess who came to breakfast?

But Jackson "isn't only talking to the people in the ghettos," House Speaker Jim Wright points out, while dangling the possibility of a vice-presidential nomination for Jackson. "He's talking to the most socially prominent families in America."

Indeed, in the midst of the New York campaign, Jackson found himself at a swanky hotel breakfasting with some of the Democratic Party's "elder statesmen"-all of whom have ties to the highest circles the capitalist class.

"The meeting has been devoted to listening to Jesse Jackson tell us about his contact with the American people," millionaire lawyer Clark Clifford, who served as Secretary of Defense under Lyndon B. Johnson, told reporters in the hotel lobby.

"The Democratic Party has always been the party of innovation," Clifford deadHERES MY NEW JOBS PROGRAM -DUKAKIS AND AFTER A FEW YEI 'HE GAINS CONFIDENC panned for the reporters. 'It's possible that Jesse Jackson may be the one to bring innovation to our party."

Clark Clifford, before he became a Vietnam War hawk, was the architect of Harry Truman's 1948 1948 presidential campaign. In order to facilitate endorsements by Black and trade-union leaders, Clifford drew up a demogogic campaign platform that emphasized civil rights and promised to repeal the Taft-Hartley antilabor law.

At whistle stops throughout the country, Truman denounced his Republican Party YoU TAKE SOMEONE WHO's HAD LIMITED SKILLS AND SOME SETBACKS...

THEN YOU PUMP IN TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. opponents as tools of "Wall Street gluttons." The bureaucratic leadership of the CIO and the AFL union federations gladly took the bait, going all out to secure a Democratic Party election triumph.

After he received the unexpected news of his presidential victory, Truman's first words were, "Labor did it!" But within 24 hours of the election, Truman began to renege on his promises; he put forth proposals for a new strike-breaking law to supersede Taft-Hartley.

As in 1948, Clifford's current talk about "innovation" is just for show. Jackson is being groomed as the "responsible" politician who can most effectively divert social AND YOU GIVE HIM TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE...

AND HE BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!! struggles into the machinery of the Democratic Party.

Praise of the working class and swipes against "Wall Street pirates" have been constant themes in the Democratic Party's pronouncements this year. But like the other Democratic candidates-past and present-Jackson concentrates his fire on the Republicans.

The Democratic Party, which joins the Republicans in sacrificing the interests of working people to those of the capitalist class, is let off the hook.

Jackson counsels the Blacks, Hispanics, and white working people who flock to his campaign meetings to help him roll back the clock to the days before "Reaganomics." He told ABC news: "We would do well to look on the [Jimmy] Carter years as government, People in running the perhaps the years of most inclusion of the But Jackson's memory is short. Carter, a graduate of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, a pro-imperialist thinktank, filled his cabinet with representatives of U.S. corporations and foreign-policy strategists left over from the Vietnam War years.

The wealthy corporations rejoiced when Carter cut their taxes and when he tried to use the Taft Hartley Act to break the miners' strike of 1978. But by 1979, when Carter engineered a phony "oil crisis," barely 25 percent of the population was willing to give him a "positive" rating.

In spite of the antiwar sentiment of the American people, Carter drastically increased the military budget, authorized the MX and cruise-missile program, initiated disruption campaigns against Nicaragua and Grenada, and brought the United States to the brink of war in Iran.

Yet Jackson favors Jimmy Carter for the next Secretary of State. Rather than "innovation," it's business as usual for the Democratic Party. And when the time comes, Jackson states, he will tell his supporters to vote for the frontrunner for president. He'll back Dukakis just as he backed Mondale in 1984.

What will Jackson get in turn for his support to Dukakis? Big-wigs in Washington have suggested several prizes, including chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, an anti-drug czardom, a foreign-ministry-without-portfolio—or even a cabinet post.

The May 2 issue of Newsweek points out that these "delicate negotiations require maximum delicacy, if not outright deception. Dukakis must not give the impression he's cutting a seamy deal, or 'kowtowing' to Jackson. On the other hand, Jackson must convince Black voters he extracted enough, by way of concessions, to justify his acquiescence."

"It's going to take the whole party to put that relationship together," a top Democratic Party leader told Newsweek. "That's what most of the next few months will be about."