Comrade Jesse Jackson

WASHINGTON -- We've found out in recent weeks that Jesse Jackson is a financial chiseler and a marital cheat.

What most Americans still don't know about him is that he is also in bed with the American Stalinists of the Communist Party USA.

Here's the evidence of what I charge:

In the January 1984 edition of Political Affairs, "the theoretical journal of the Communist Party USA," self-described "Harlem organizer for the New York Communist Party" Kevin Mercadel boasted, "Our '84 electoral activity began with the formation of the Rainbow Coalition in Harlem in support of Jesse Jackson's campaign for the presidency." Mercadel added that the Communists were not only allowed to work in the coalition, "but, indeed, it was expected of us."

One of Jackson's top organizers is Jack O'Dell, who served as director of international affairs of the National Rainbow Coalition. He is also a Communist Party USA veteran.

The late Gus Hall, longtime boss of the Communist Party USA, endorsed Jackson's presidential campaign in 1988, as the height of "a new level of united independent political action, within and outside the Democratic Party," he said in the September-October 1988 edition of Political Affairs.

In the July 1989 edition of Political Affairs, John Holme, chairman of the Northern California political action commission of the party, wrote, "Like many of the campaigns in which Communists play an active role, the Jackson '88 campaign was an 'inner Democratic Party struggle.'"

In the March 1989 edition of Political Affairs, James Steele, a member of the executive committee of the party, wrote, "If we Communists are not prejudiced by form; if we do not have a jaundiced attitude toward inner-Democratic party struggles, our party can make a unique contribution toward helping the Rainbow achieve its goal of consolidating a mass membership organization corresponding to the size of its electoral support."

The July 1988 edition of Political Affairs notes, "In Pittsburgh, separatism was disguised with charges that 'white communist elements' took over the Jackson campaign." Apparently, even the Michael Dukakis campaign realized just how deeply infiltrated and compromised was the Jackson campaign.

Jackson was the keynote speaker at a 1985 commemoration of the 10th anniversary of "the liberation of Vietnam" sponsored by the Communist Party USA, according to the Daily World, May 7, 1985 edition.

Jackson was again the star of a Berkeley symposium July 20, 1984, sponsored by the Marxist Black Scholar magazine and including presentations by three CPUSA leaders.

I could go on and on. Jackson may not be an official, card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, but he could not be serving the group's interests more if he was. The Communists love him. He's been their standard-bearer in electoral politics and grass-roots community organizing for at least 15 years.

More importantly, suggests the voluminous coverage Jackson has received in the official Communist press, he represents the party's best political hope to hijack the Democratic Party for its own purposes.

Study the issues. See if you can detect even the slightest disagreement or conflict between the positions of the Communist Party and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. I dare you. You won't find much. They are strong political allies because they agree 99 percent of the time.

Of course, it's nothing new for the Communist Party to work within the Democratic Party. They did it with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Then they split along with Henry Wallace. But they came back into the Democratic Party political fold in 1972, when George McGovern got the nomination. And they have been there ever since -- sometimes working directly on behalf of the nominee, as they did with Al Gore in 2000, and sometimes working for a dissident like Jackson.

But no "mainstream" political leader in U.S. history has ever cozied up quite so close to the Communists as Jackson.

Crook, cheat, commie with a small "c" -- does Jesse Jackson need to collect any more baggage before we dismiss him and his discredited, statist, collectivist ideas from the national debate?