Did you know Sanders helped Jesse Jackson win the Vermont Caucus in 1988?

[rgbecker]

21. According to the linked article:

"Jackson, a month and a half after he lost to Dukakis in the nonbinding primary by 31 points, won the Vermont caucuses—edging Dukakis 46 to 45 percent. The outsider had bested the party establishment guy, and in his backyard no less. It presaged, in some ways, Sanders’ own upsets against Clinton in 2016 when he trounced her in New Hampshire on the way to winning 23 primaries, stretching the contest into late spring.

It’s impossible to quantify the precise effect Sanders’ support might have had. Jackson campaign staffers say their furious organizing efforts closed the gap. But after that? “I think Bernie might’ve made the difference between winning and losing,” Steve Cobble, the campaign’s national delegate coordinator, told me. “He was, without question, the leader of progressives in Vermont,” Glitman said. “If Bernie had not really convinced a bunch of us to go to the Democratic caucus to support Jackson, I don’t think Jackson would have won the Burlington caucus—there were a lot of progressives there,” Bouricius added. “It was,” Jackson told me, “very valuable.”