Many on the left who supported the Jesse Jackson campaign did so because they believed the "progressive movement" behind the Black candidate would create a crisis, and possibly a split, in the Democratic Party. Since this "Rainbow challenge" could break the stranglehold of conservatism on U.S. politics, the argument went, socialists should be actively involved in the campaign.

Last month's preliminary negotiations on this year's Democratic Party platform showed--if any more proof were needed--that this view is wrong.

Dropping the remnants of his "radical" rhetoric, Jackson capitulated to the policies of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis for the sake of "party unity" and a role in a future Democratic administration. Far from reviving the independent left, the Jackson campaign has instead reinforced the idea that the Democratic Party--a patsy of big business and the enemy of the workers everywhere--is the only political option for militants interested in changing society.

Indeed, Jackson personally saw to it that "progressive politics" would not get in the way of his accommodation with the Dukakis campaign. "What counts is the final victory we shall achieve in November," he told Eleanor Holmes Norton, a key negotiator for the Jackson delegation at this month's Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

After Dukakis' delegates voted down Jackson's platform proposals on June 26 and drafted the shortest platform in Democratic Party history, Norton took defeat in stride. The campaign's goal was to be inside at the microphone, she said, not outside on the picket line.

Norton, one of the most prominent Black officials in the Carter administration and a Democratic insider, joined the Jackson campaign in its final weeks to represent the candidate at the convention. Bert Lance, the former budget director, under Jimmy Carter, and Anne Lewis, a former deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, have emerged as Jackson's top strategists. Meanwhile, those Jackson advisers with radical pasts, such as former civil rights activist Jack O'Dell and Rainbow Coalition director Ron Daniels, have dropped out of sight.

Jackson's shift into the mainstream could also be seen in his announcement last month of a new, Washington-based political action committee centered around lobbying Congress. Coming only weeks before the Democratic Party convention, this was a signal by Jackson to the party that whatever the outcome of the election, he is ready to play by the rules.

Tellingly, the National Rainbow Coalition Inc.--the movement vehicle--has virtually disappeared since its October convention. The few left-wingers still visible in the Jackson campaign made it clear that they would not rock the boat at the convention. "We could come in to sack and ruin, particularly with the number of delegates we have, " said Robert Borosage, Jackson's top "issues" adviser. "But we're not doing that. We've agreed to disagree, but that in itself is a form of agreement."

Dukakis' delegation did add to the platform Jackson's call for the State Department to designate South Africa as a "terrorist state." But two years after a Republican-controlled Senate approved sanctions against the apartheid regime over Ronald Reagan's veto, this is hardly a breakthrough for the left.

Dukakis also made a concession to Jackson over Democratic primary rules, reducing the number of automatic "superdelegates" to party conventions and curbing the "winner-take-all" primary system that limited the number of Jackson delegates at the convention. Although Jackson called the rules change "a victory of the people" and declared that " a new Democratic Party is dawning," it is nonsense to expect that a few more Jesse Jackson supporters at future Democratic Party conventions will change the party in any way.

Far from challenging the growing conservatism of the Black political establishment, the Jackson campaign has provided these officials with a new lease on life. Unwilling or unable to challenge the rightward shift in federal and state government, local Black officials have used the Jackson campaign as an outlet for the frustration of Black workers. However uncomfortable the Democratic conservatives are with Jackson, the party has been strengthened as a result of his campaign.

Those who call for the Rainbow Coalition to break from Democrats therefore miss the point: the 1988 Jackson campaign did not represent a potential split in the party. Rather, it marked the consolidation of the Black political establishment that has emerged in the Democratic Party over the last 20 years.

Jackson' shift to the right should come as no surprise. It has been developing for four years. Despite winning the vast majority of the Black vote in the 1984 primaries, Jackson delegates were brazenly shut out at the party convention by Walter Mondale. But rather than confront Mondale and the Democratic bosses or urge his supporters to break with the party, Jackson chose the road to respectability.

He first won the support of the Black political establishment, the bulk of which had supported Mondale. But since over 90 percent of the Black vote went to Jackson, Black Democrats had to support him or risk alienating Black constituents. Almost every member of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Jackson's '88 campaign, hoping to use it as a means to enhance their own standing in the Democratic Party. In return, Jackson allowed local Black Democratic officials to control his campaign at the city and state level, thereby minimizing the role of the grassroots activists who were key to the 1984 campaign.

Thus, Jackson fashioned a political "message" that, in the words of campaign chairman Willie Brown, would not "appeal excessively to so-called Black concerns." Brown, who is Black, achieved his own position as the most powerful Democrat in California by dropping " Black concerns" whenever they interfered with his wheeling and dealing in the state legislature.

Jackson publicly admitted that he sought the advice of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the "reformed" segregationist. Wallace told him to "keep your message so low the hogs can get it."

Although he often appeared at protest marches and picket lines, Jackson moved steadily to the right in the run-up to the 1988 campaign. His plan for sanctions against countries with low-wage labor was openly protectionist. And Jackson's call for a government anti-drug crusade provided a left-wing cover for union busters who seek mandatory drug testing in every workplace in the country.

Jackson's move to the right accelerated last fall, when a collection of no-name, would-be Democratic presidents left Jackson as the best-known candidate--and ahead in the opinion polls. The media responded by ignoring Jackson's politics and endlessly rehashing Jackson's past associations with Louis Farrakhan and Jackson's 1984 slur of New York City as "Hymietown." But Dukakis' early failure to break ahead of the pack gave Jackson primary victories in several states, with a particularly strong showing in the South in the March 8 Super Tuesday primaries. When Dukakis trailed both Paul Simon and Jackson in the Illinois primary a few weeks later, the national media began to take Jackson seriously.

After Jackson won the Michigan caucuses, the possibility that he could win his way onto the Democratic ticket forced the party bosses to mount an all-out push for Dukakis. Although Dukakis subsequently defeated Jackson in the Wisconsin primary, the sight of a pro-Jackson rally by the virtually all-white autoworkers in Kenosha, Wis., had the Democrats worried that Jackson could win too large a share of the white vote, preventing a white candidate from winning enough delegates to clinch the nomination.

While the Democratic National Committee was prepared to tolerate Jackson as long as he delivered his supporters to the eventual nominee, it was afraid that Jackson's power at a brokered convention would create a white backlash that would benefit the Republicans.

Suddenly, finding himself page-one news day after day, Jackson tried to increase his popularity with another lurch to the right. He criticized the Reagan administration's imperialist power play against Gen, Manuel Noriega in Panama as too soft and called for the U.S. to involve other Western nations in the anti-Iran buildup in the Persian Gulf. To the shock of the Central America solidarity activists, he declared on national television that in certain circumstances he would order the kind of military mobilization that sent U.S. troops to the Honduras-Nicaraguan border.

Jackson's bubble was finally burst by New York Mayor Ed Koch, whose openly racist attacks on Jackson polarized voters in the April 19 primary. But Jackson responded to Koch's charges of anti-Semitism by pandering to Zionist sentiments himself, abandoning his position that the Palestinian Liberation Organization should be included in any Middle East peace plan.

Koch's efforts paid off for the Democrats. Since the mayor endorsed Sen. Albert Gore, Dukakis was untainted by his racist assault on Jackson. But Dukakis, who got an overall majority of the New York vote, was clearly the beneficiary of the race baiting. According to exit polls, the majority of the people who voted for him made up their minds to do so less than three days before the primary.

In other words, they voted for Dukakis not because they were enthusiastic about his politics, but to stop Jesse Jackson.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Jackson made only mild criticisms of Dukakis, publicly calling for a proposed budget, higher taxes for the rich, a freeze in defense spending and a consultative role in the selection of a vice presidential candidate. According to the City Sun, New York City's leading Black newspaper, Jackson turned down 40 requests for interviews from the Black press. Like all Democratic politicians, Jackson took the Black vote for granted since Black voters have nowhere else to go.

At the Rainbow Coalition convention last October, Jackson went so far as to say that the problem of racist violence in the U.S. had been solved--despite the fact that there has been an increasing number of racist attacks nationwide.

In the end, the Jackson campaign led even "critical" supporters to accept the logic that a Democratic victory in November will make a fundamental difference in the lives of American workers. But if you accept that the Jackson campaign could initiate a shift to the left or a split in the Democratic Party, it follows that you should vote for Dukakis this fall--even though there are no genuine political distinctions between Dukakis and Republican candidate George Bush. And like the Black voters who provided Jimmy Carter with the margin of victory in 1976, the 6.6 million people who voted for Jackson in the 1988 primaries will ultimately find themselves betrayed by a "lesser evil" Democratic administration whose commitment to the priorities of capitalism give lie to the party's rhetoric of social justice.

Today, those on the left who put their energy and hopes into the Jackson campaign are finding themselves empty-handed. Despite well-meaning efforts to inject socialist politics into the Jackson "movement," thousands of activists have seen their efforts end in backroom wheeling and dealing at the Democratic convention.

That is the cost of the failure to build a revolutionary socialist alternative to the twin capitalist parties of racism, imperialism and war.

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