Eugene V. Debs: The American Socialist

05/14/20 • 40 min

American presidential candidates aren’t supposed to be convicted criminals, let alone socialists. But in 1920, nearly one million Americans cast their vote for the Socialist Party nominee as he campaigned from a U.S. federal prison: Eugene V. Debs, prisoner 9653.

This was Debs fifth presidential run and his last. Incarcerated on charges of sedition, Debs committed an act of political defiance that shook America and set the stage for a new kind of Democratic Party, one that would embrace the likes of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders a century later.

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Jesse Jackson: The Rainbow Coalition

In 1984, the Rev. Jesse Jackson had little hope of winning the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He was a Black man without the backing of the African American political establishment; a Civil Rights veteran in an era of corporate triumphalism and Top Gun patriotism.

But to the cries of “Run, Jesse, run," Jackson launched an improbable campaign for the White House. He assembled a 'Rainbow Coalition' of supporters who not only changed the face of the Democratic Party but changed the perception of who could be a national presidential candidate - making the winning campaign of Barack Obama possible three decades later.

WARNING: This episode contains racial epithets used to provide historical and journalistic context.

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Herman Cain: The Godfather

Many pundits dismissed businessman Herman Cain as an entertaining, if inept, sideshow during the 2012 Republican presidential primary. But the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO struck a nerve among conservatives craving a candidate who would 'tell it like it is'. Indeed, Cain, who came up in the Tea Party movement, led the GOP contest just weeks before the first votes were cast -- then an avalanche of sexual misconduct accusations derailed him. A closer look reveals Cain was an entertainer, yes, but also a window into the soul of the modern Republican Party, which would come to embrace another entertaining CEO, Donald Trump, just four years later.

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