The Long Rise of the New Democratic Party
Michael Barone
Can I claim to have predicted, way back in 1988, the result of Michigan's fiercely contested Democratic primary for U.S. senator this week?
The developments that have made Abdul El-Sayed — who lost the 2018 gubernatorial primary to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) by 20 percentage points — a winner over Rep. Haley Stevens (MI-11) were visible in the 1988 contest for Michigan's delegates to the Democratic National Convention, in which Jesse Jackson ran far ahead of eventual nominee Michael Dukakis by a 24-percentage-point margin.
Let's flash back 38 years to see what I mean. Then, as a member of the Washington Post editorial page staff, I wrote an article in the Post two weeks after Jackson's surprise victory, starting out by describing the unusual process.
"The Michigan Democrats' 'firehouse primary' caucus system allowed any eligible voter claiming to be a Democrat to cast a vote — but only between 10 and 4 on a Saturday and at only 576, rather than the usual 11,000, voting locations. In 1988 some 212,000 — from a state that cast 3.8 million votes in the 1984 general election — came in and voted."
In this low-turnout environment, "About 40 percent of them — no one is sure, because no exit poll was taken — were black, and Jesse Jackson, with the 20 percent vote among whites he had been receiving in other caucus situations (much of it from Michigan's large graduate student proletariat and Arab-American populations), beat Dukakis by 54 percent to 28 percent."
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https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2026/08/07/the-long-rise-of-the-new-democratic-party-n2680826
