Four years after his breakthrough campaign, Jesse Jackson tries again, this time with the aim of winning not just black voters but also whites — and the Democratic nomination.

Jesse Jackson was back for round two, and this time wide support from black leaders and voters was assumed from the start.

This version of the candidate placed a new premium on outreach to white voters, who had stayed away almost entirely from his 1984 effort. Jackson was now seeking to build a "rainbow coalition" that could actually compete for the nomination.

"My message is transcending ancient barriers," he said. "Whites all over the country have opened their hearts to me. They know there has been this separation, and now they have been willing today to say, 'Let's call it even.'" (“Jackson’s Winning Ways Transform Candidate, Voters," Paul Taylor, The Washington Post, March 15, 1988.)

The '88 campaign featured a significant calendar twist: a regional primary in early March, with a dozen Southern and border states banding together to hold contests on the same day. It was the brainchild of the newly launched Democratic Leadership Council, which hoped Super Tuesday would propel a moderate to the nomination. Ironically, though, this also presented an opportunity for Jackson, an unabashed liberal often at odds with the DLC (which, he liked to claim, actually stood for "Democrats for the Leisure Class").