I'm not sure what Garance's point is here. No one should ever be surprised that outsider candidates of any kind are treated with disdain by Washington power brokers and High Pundits, but the fact that Washington insiders didn't want to have much to do with Jesse Jackson has little bearing on the fact that the guy had fairly broad appeal and managed to attract a hell of a lot of votes, quite possibly many more votes than Obama will eventually receive (this is not judgment or prediction, just highlighting the fact that no one's, you know, cast a vote for the guy yet). He certainly had, by the only measure which is really important, a hell of a lot more broad mainstream support than did the very serious mainstream Joe Lieberman. I have serious doubts that he'd have managed to actually win the presidency had he won the primary, but he couldn't have done much worse than Mike Dukakis.
Jackson also ran in 1984, and got 20% of the Democratic primary vote and 10% of the delegates.
