This is intercepted.

I'm Ryan Grimm, Philly and for Jeremy Scayhill, and this is episode 115 of Intercepted.

To really understand what happened Monday night, let's roll the tape back 30 or 40 years.

The Democratic Party underwent an ideological transformation in the 1980s, battered by the Reagan Revolution, a new cadre of operatives rose, calling themselves new Democrats, arguing that the party needed to distance itself from what they called special interest groups.

And by special interest groups, they met civil rights activists, environmentalists, feminists, gay rights activists, labor unions.

What they needed instead was to move to the center and match Republicans' dollar for dollar and corporate pack fundraising and big money.

We know big government does not have all the answers. We know and we have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. The era of big government is over.

The same year Reagan was inaugurated Bernie Sanders ran and won his race for mayor of Burlington. In 1984 and again in 1988, the push back against the new Democrats took the form of the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson.

I ask for your vote on the first ballot as a vote for a new direction for this party and this nation. A vote of conviction. A vote of touches.

One of the only white elected officials to endorse in campaign for Jackson was Bernie Sanders.

Here he is talking about it in 1988 as Jackson surged to the top of the pack.

When lose or draw, his candidacy will be remembered as the most significant presidential campaign in at least 50 years in this nation.

In attempting to bring working people and poor people and elderly people and people of all colors together.

To be able to stand off and fight for their rights and to fight for their dignity. Sometimes we lose the knowledge that history is being made when it's being made in front of us. That is in fact what is happening right now.

Sanders was an independent and he struggled with whether to participate in the Democratic primary at all.

I am the only non-democrat, non-Republican independent progressive mayor in the United States of America.

It is awkward. I really admit. It is awkward for me to walk into a Democratic party caucus. Believe me, it is awkward. I am not a Democrat period.

Bernie argued that while some racist whites might indeed refuse to vote for Jackson, he had the possibility to expand the Democratic electorate.

So while in fact he may end up losing some conservative white votes, some racist white votes, I think there is a real chance that he could do what Mandel couldn't do in a million years.

That is to bring millions and millions of poor people and working people into the political arena who in the past never participated. That's the interesting question.

That was not only Jackson's strategy, it was his counterargument to the new Democrats. We don't need corporate money he argued. We need people.

Reagan won the last time, not by genius. Reagan won when we were asleep.

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