Bill Daley, brother of Richard M., spotted newsman Robert Novak on the convention floor in 1988. The Dems had handed Rev. Jesse Jackson the spotlight before nominating Dukakis, allowing him to blare forth his message in what Novak wrote was “a triumphal address” that mentioned Dukakis “only in passing.”
Daley wanted to talk. From their conversation came this in Novak’s column:
“For those who watched television,” one Midwestern Democratic operative told us, “what they saw looked like a black party.” That troubled Democrats who are anything but racists. The depletion of Dukakis’s lead, according to polls released during the convention, is attributable to the Jackson factor.
That’s in Novak’s memoir, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, pp. 450–451. Novak continues:
Daley was no racist, and there was no more loyal Democrat. . . . . But he feared the disastrous candidacies of George McGovern, Fritz Mondale, and now Mike Dukakis posed a bleak future for traditional Democrats.
So it is in our day that the black candidate poses a problem for Dems, as is clear from the “buyers’ remorse” item mentioned below.
Not to mention Newsbusters, with this telling graphic.
Blithe Spirit 