Jerry Brown's 1992 campaign was one of the weirdest presidential campaigns in American history imo

It's not immediately obvious why in retrospect: If you glance at Brown's history you see a man who achieved high office at a young age and remained a major political figure at an old age. Not particularly noteworthy.

The thing is is that Jerry Brown is 1992 was basically the definition of a washed up has-been politician: It's not like in 1976 when he was a young/handsome upstart: He (appeared to) fumbled his political career when he ran for Senate instead of for a third term in '82 and lost.

Brown in 1980 was absolutely terrible: He lambasted Ted Kennedy as a "socialist" and said "those who abuse their bodies should not abuse the rest of us by taking our tax dollars", which is well to the right of what e.g. Bill Clinton would say at the height of the New Dem. era.

Anyway, after he was humiliated in the '82 Senate race he basically become a spiritual tourist, going to Kolkata to meet Mother Theresa and then Japan to study Buddhism.

The foundations for this were already there: In the same 1980 campaign where he ran against universal healthcare he apparently spoke extensively about the need for state-subsidized acupuncture programs.

So yeah, the guy spent the rest of the 80s in the political wilderness. It's pretty universally known that all the big names except for Arkansas Gov. and rising star Bill Clinton decided to sit out the '92 primary out of fear of losing to Bush (Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, etc.)

In addition to Bill Clinton, of course, was former Senator Paul Tsongas (another person who would've gone literally nowhere had the likes of Cuomo/Gore entered - Calling him a "has-been" in a '92 context is almost too generous to describe him).

Tsongas was, of course, so right-wing as to make Bill Clinton (or hell, even Jerry Brown, who was also more conservative than Clinton) look like a communist: As far as I know he's the only Democrat Mitt Romney has ever explicitly endorsed.

Anyway, back to Brown: Despite being a has-been at the time he saw an opportunity with Cuomo/Gore/etc.'s non-presence so he ran with it.

Brown had to use alternative media and weird fundraising strategies like buying a toll-free telephone number where you'd hear all his stances if you called it - People mocked him as a political televangelist for it.

His platform was an idiosyncratic mess: He was anti-NAFTA (cool!) but had his uber-conservative tax plan which featured ending progressive taxation in favor of a flat tax written with the help of notorious Reaganomist Arthur Laffer of Laffer curve fame.

It was a campaign that demanded campaign finance reform and refused to take contributions over $100 while also advocating for the abolition of the Department of Education: For this he was described as simultaneously being the most right-wing and left-wing person in the field.

He got less than 2% in Iowa and 8% in NH but then unexpectedly won a string of states and after Super Tuesday became Clinton's biggest threat. He lost Wisconsin by a narrow margin and then New York by a larger margin and it all fell apart, though.

But yeah, he basically ran dare I say a... proto-Yang campaign in 1992 and did bizarrely well for someone of his diminished stature. Really weird guy. The 1992 primary as a whole was really misunderstood tbh.