The Surprising Link Between Bernie Sanders and Jesse Jackson

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]And a lot of progressive Democrats would say to me, well, you know, before Bernie Sanders, there was Jesse Jackson. I myself did not fully understand the connection between those two.

[00:00:10]And you might remember that in the 2020 campaign, Reverend Jackson did come out and make an endorsement in that campaign. And he endorsed Bernie Sanders at a rally in Michigan. And the history that they were drawing upon in that moment was of Jesse Jackson 1980 80 a really blowing the socks off the Democratic establishment by winning the Michigan caucus. And really shaking them to their core and making them realize, hey, there's something real behind this.

[00:00:42]There's energy behind this. He's not a gadfly. You can't just ignore him. And so I do think that that that those connections and then the need to draw that line between what modern progressivism looks like today and where Jesse Jackson brought it in the 1980s and how he influenced Bernie Sanders.

[00:01:01]How he influenced the language around progressivism. How he put things like universal health care on the table. Like a two-state solution on the table. Like um, you know, a tax system that doesn't just benefit the wealthy, but also the poor and the middle class. All of those things came out of Jesse Jackson's campaigns.