Democrats, Populism and Insurgent Populists (a response)
Michael Moore’s latest film and Alan Grayson’s “die quickly” speech in the House have revived interest in an old question: What is populism, and why is the Democratic Party so afraid of it?
Populism is politics which opposes wealth and power in the name of the common folk. It takes both left wing and right wing forms and sometimes degenerates into bigotry and attacks on minorities. Populism can be faked, and that is being done right now – e.g., Limbaugh and Beck. Populist appeals can be made by spokesmen for special interests who have no intention of fulfilling their democratic promises, but who are just opportunistically faking populism as part of an attack on some enemy. (As I never get tired of saying: Republican populism is fake, but Democratic elitism is real).
Since the Fifties the Democratic Party, whose populist wing was critically important during the New Deal, has avoided and repressed populism. Individual populists such as Paul Wellstone have occasionally been elected, often in defiance of the party machine, but they have never had much influence in the party. The Democratic strategy has been cooperation with big business, and their slogan has been “a rising tide lifts all boats” — “win-win” solutions where everyone wins and nobody loses. This worked pretty well until about 1970, when business started to pull away from the deal, and since that time it’s been mostly downhill for the Democrats, for labor, and for the average American.
When they made their deal with big business, the Democrats became a wonky party of technocrats and expert administrators who balanced all the various interests and came up with the answer which was best for everyone, and they distanced themselves from their earlier party-of-the-common-man pretensions. Rather than to represent the majority of the electorate, they increasingly defined their constituency as a hodgepodge of special interest. Political parties inevitably do represent plural interests, as the Democrats certainly had done ever since the Civil War, but the post-Fifties Democrats made a fractionated constituency a deliberate goal and did everything they could to avoid majoritarian appeals and to marginalize majoritarianism within the party.
As part of this transformation of the party, the Democrats needed to misrepresent populism. Since then there’s been an almost unmixed stream of slanders coming from both parties, until by now anyone counts as a populist as long as they’re abusive, ignorant, racist, and dishonest. (The Nazi David Duke sometimes calls himself a Populist, and he was allowed to get away with it). Almost everyone comes out of Pol Sci 100 knowing that the Populists were bad guys, and the Pol Sci 101 attitude is pervasive among party leaders, wonk staffers, and a big chunk of the Democratic electorate.
However, during most of the period since the Civil War, however, progressive energy in this country has mostly come from movements of the Populist typeworking outside the parties or against the party leadership: Greenbackers, Progressives (three kinds), Socialists, Farmer-Laborites, Nonpartisan-Leaguers, and independents — to say nothing of unions, farm organizations, and civil rights groups. (Martin Luther King’s movement was essentially populism, albeit minority populism).
Below I will sketch the history of the Democratic Party in its relations with the Populist Party, small-p populism, and the various sorts of progressivism during the period from about 1890 to the middle of the 1950s, and suggest that many of the problems the Democrats have now can be traced back to the redefinition of the Democratic Party that took place at the end of this period.
Below:
THE POPULISTS
SMALL-P POPULISM AFTER 1896
ANTI-POPULISM AFTER WWII
SOME CONCLUSIONS
THE POPULISTS
The Populist Party was a national party only from 1890 to 1896; when they endorsed the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, in return for very small concessions – this basically destroyed the party. At that time both the Democratic and the Republican parties were dominated by big business, so that the workers and small farmers who made up 70%+ of the population were effectively unrepresented. (Democratic President Grover Cleveland was perhaps the most anti-labor President of the era). The Populists were strongest among farmers and in the South and West, but they were affiliated with the Knights of Labor, and in 1894 the Populist Frank McBride was elected President of the AFL (Gompers’ only defeat).
Altogether the Populists elected ten governors, six Senators, and about forty Congressmen. In 1892 the Populist candidate got 8.5% of the vote for President and carried four states and parts of two others; Cleveland’s margin of victory in that election was only 3%, so the Populists were a real factor. In 1896 the dissident Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who had some Populist sympathies, got the Democratic nomination. The Populists supported him, but he lost worth 45.8% of the vote and a smaller percentage of the electoral vote, all from the South and West. Bryan ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat two more times, but the Populists never were a factor in a Presidential election again.
Presidential third parties seldom come close to winning, and the populists are no exception. Furthermore, as often as not the third party doesn’t survive the election, and that was essentially the case with the Populists. But the Populists had enormous significance — by bringing poor farmers and labor, and their issues, into the electoral equation for the first time, by stealing voters from some of the Democratic and Republican constituencies, and above all, by disrupting the other two parties’ strategies.
The parties’ response was savage and multifaceted. The Eastern Democrats ran their own candidate in 1896 and boycotted Bryan every time other time he ran. The Spanish American War was fought in part to distract the voters from domestic issues and weaken the Populists, and this distraction was quite effective. And last and worst, because Populists in the South sometimes went into coalition with the Republicans, forcing the Democrats to campaign for the black vote and also threatening the Democratic Solid South, the two established parties made a back-room agreement to disenfranchise Southern blacks. During this period the two parties were in collusion, with very similar principles and goals, and if the South had been thrown into contention the resulting confusion would have threatened both the Republican and the Democratic bosses. (The willingness of the Republicans to sacrifice their own Southern supporters is one of the remarkable facts of American history).
SMALL-P POPULISM AFTER 1896
After the collapse of the Populist Party the attitude of the Democratic Party toward small-p populism was ambiguous. Many of the Populist issues were kept alive by progressives working mostly at the state level — the national campaign organizations in 1912 and 1924 were ad hoc and short-lived. The Democratic leadership was as stodgy and business-dominated as ever, but) if they ever wanted to win they still needed to get as many votes as possible from ex-Populists and their Progressive successors. They mostly resolved this dilemma by not winning, but in 1912 Woodrow Wilson — like Cleveland an honest, independent Democrat who was able to work with the machine — was elected President with the semi-Populist Bryan as his running mate. Wilson had been pretty conservative before his election, but in his first term he signed many populist / progressive bills and paid at least lip service to Bryan’s anti-war principles.
By 1932 the Populist Party itself was a distant memory, but between 1932 and 1938 (Roosevelt’s most progressive period) Roosevelt and the Democrats relied heavily on support from populist / progressive Senators and Representatives – some from third parties, and some from dissident factions of the two major parties. The progressive-populist faction pushed Roosevelt steadily to the left in domestic policy, though it had to contend with stubborn resistance from the much more conservative machine Democrats and Southern Bourbons (and also, of course, orthodox Republicans).
In 1938, however, the approaching war broke up the progressive / Democrat coalition, and many of the progressives, who were often isolationists, deserted Roosevelt. From this point on Roosevelt increasingly governed with regular Democratic support, which he was able to do because the Democratic majorities were huge, and progress on domestic policy slowed (thought the Keynesian effects of war spending had a positive effect). Winning the war became the primary goal, and the Democratic Party became a technocratic / machine party.
ANTI-POPULISM AFTER WWII
By 1945 American society had been transformed by the war effort, and the Democratic Party was dominated by its technocratic wing, Because of the religious appeals, moralism, and majoritarianism of the Populists (and many Progressives), from WWI on the technocratic New Republic liberals held Populists and Progressives in very low regard despite their many valid proposals, and liberal-technocratic social engineers played a role in the New Deal right from the start. Furthermore, after WWII, America’s future course in foreign policy was uncertain, with options ranging from war against the USSR to peaceful coexistence, and the technocrats favored a policy of Realpolitik which was abhorrent both to right and left populists. The Cold War compromise solution pleased no one, since it involved switching from a holy war against Fascism (allied to Communism) to a holy war against Communism allied to the surviving Fascists.
In 1948 the Democrats purged its left, much of which had populist roots, and the right populists mostly ended in the Republican Party. Truman’s purge wasn’t thorough enough for the right, and an anti-elitist McCarthyism strain emerged which survives to this day, (for example with the teabaggers). Meanwhile, Democratic intellectuals, partly following the leftist German refugee Adorno, developed a theory holding that all populism is ultimately totalitarian, either Fascist or Communist.
The liberals described McCarthy as a populist and hinted that he was a Fascist. This was actually a very peculiar move. First, while McCarthy was anti-elitist and demagogic and appealed to the common man, he also was a fairly standard conservative Republican whose support did not come mostly from populists or progressives. Second, calling McCarthy a populist did not hurt him with anyone who had not read Adorno and who still admired the Populists. And finally, by the time these criticisms of McCarthy came out, McCarthy had been censured and had died in disgrace.
The target was not McCarthy at all. McCarthy had had a lot of Democratic support, including the Kennedys, but in any case he had been defeated. Tthe technocratic Cold War liberals had won – they controlled the Democratic Party and expected to win the Presidency in 1960. The real goal of these attacks was to preclude the re-emergence of a populist wing within the Democratic Party, so that the Democrats could redefine themselves as a neutral, non-majoritarian elite of experts. While in office, Democrats conduct a realistic, militaristic foreign policy while domestically dividing the goodies between the nation’s many and varied interest groups without identifying with any one of them — and above all without responding to majoritarian anti-business or anti-war popular movements.
SOME CONCLUSIONS
My main conclusion is that the Democrats have crippled themselves by renouncing populist and majoritarian appeals while presenting themselves as expert administrators and effectively allowing the Republican Party to cash in on fake populism. This strategy hasn’t worked since 1968, and it has crippled the Democrats by making them incapable of counterattacking against blatantly dishonest fake-populist appeals by the Republicans. At the level of the high-level party pros and a lot of elected officials, this isn’t a problem at all – they are business Democrats on the take from the plutocratic malefactors, and they do very well for themselves even when the Democrats lose.
But the elitist strategy is disastrous in its effects at the lower levels – the sincere, wonkish party workers who have been indoctrinated with anti-populism in Pol Sci 101, and even more so the enormous contingent of Democratic voters who have also taken Pol Sci 101 and think of themselves as wonks. On the internet and elsewhere, far too often rank and file Democratic discussions of politics, rather than concentrating on the reasons why the Democratic position is the right one (in the cases when it really is), end up with wonky discussions about process, and these discussions always seem to end with a lesser-evil slide to the center. And while this is exactly what the Democratic leadership wants, this is usually not what rank and file Democrats, Democratic volunteers, and idealistic low-level workers want.
It’s noticeable that racial issues and foreign wars repeatedly derailed past populist initiatives, and this is the main problem we have to battle against. The fake populists of today (militaristic little-government goldbugs) are, in fact, the very opposite of the populists of history, and almost identical to the McKinley Republicans who defeated populism. All they share with the Populists is angry rhetoric and the racism of which the Populists have been rather unfairly accused. (Many Populists were racists, especially in the South, but it’s hard to show that the Populists were more racist than the other two parties, and considering that the Democratic Party was the segregationist party right up until 1965, this isn’t really a criticism that Democrats should so easily make).
We also have to remember that, while the Populist Party had a lot of labor support and was not exclusively agrarian, the majority of its supporters were dirt farmers, who at that time constituted 50% or so of the population. The demographics have changed enormously since then, and farmers by now are less than 5% of the population, and even factory workers are a rather small demographic. Obviously populist appeals in our time have to define the majority in some other way, without agrarian or proletarian nostalgia.
And finally, the institutional Democratic Party is not anti-populist by accident. In order to change its direction, we will have to take it over from the bottom up and bounce the present leadership. To do this will be labor-intensive, involving a lot of face to face contact and a lot of time in meetings, and it will also require money. It’s my impression that fake Republican populists, driven by a sense of religious duty, are more devoted to the cause than most liberals are; in part, this may in fact be a function of elite complacency (Republicans are stupid, uneducated, velveeta-cheese-eating trailer trash, right?)
But imagine a million (or ten million) Democrats donating $50 a year each (not really a lot) and volunteering 5 hours a week to a dissident progressive group. This would be a substantial force. With a genuine populist appeal, you could form such a group. It would steal support from the Democratic machine, and you’d also have people switching away from single-issue groups whose goals are unattainable under Republicans or conservative Democrats.
But in order to do this, you’d have to define, find and persuade an actual majority.
(This piece is part of a longer piece which mushroomed out of control. A follow-up piece will defend the Populists of the Populist Party against the criticisms from 1950s liberals, and will include an annotated bibliography.)
Democrats, Populism and Insurgent Populists (a response)
October 11, 2009 at 4:06 am
I don’t think it’s coincidental that the Democratic embrace of civil rights coincided with the distancing from populism. Alben Barkley was really in the minority being able to combine the two . . .
October 11, 2009 at 4:21 am
Bryan wasn’t Wilson’s running mate; he just supported him and was his secretary of state for the first 2 years.
October 11, 2009 at 4:49 am
Minivet: Yeah, that was a slip.
Charley: Delton’s “Making Minnesota Liberal” has a different take on that. In 1948 Hubert Humphrey led and won the fight for a civil rights plank at the Democratic convention. He had just succeeded in merging the Minnesota Democrats with the left wing populist Farmer Labor Party, and his strong civil rights stand was one of the things he used to convince the populist FL people that he wasn’t an old school Copperhead Democrat. To my knowledge, none of the prairie populists (progressives) of the 30s were racist, whereas a lot of the regular Democrats were.
Populists, little-p or big-P, were all over the map on race, with a big North-South split. (In this they were much like Democrats.) Southern Democrats were fairly united on race, but some of the less racist Southerners were of a populist type (e.g. Jim Folson.)
Basically, to me your comment is just the same old Hofstadterism, which takes George Wallace to be the typical populist.
October 11, 2009 at 11:15 am
I don’t think it’s coincidental that the Democratic embrace of civil rights coincided with the distancing from populism.
The first major populist-distancing act by the national party was dumping Henry A. Wallace from the ticket. Wallace, if you recall, was pro-civil-rights. The man he was dumped for, Harry Truman, was from a segregated state, and therefore perceived to be anti-civil-rights.
Up until reaching the presidency, Truman was basically a know-nothing opponent of waste, fraud and abuse. Chuck Grassley avant la lettre.
We remember Truman for integrating the army (he was forced to by the war) and campaigning on give em hell populism (he was forced to by nearly losing to liberal Republican Thomas Dewey). But Truman was there in the first place because of anti-populism.
October 11, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Truman was also a machine politician, from the Prendergast machine in KC. When people talk about leaders “growing in office”, they usually start their list with Truman.
Wallace was an ambiguous figure too, because when he was Sec. of Ag. the populists disliked him. He did represent the left-populist wing of the party in 1948. In Minnesota the Framer-Labor wing of the newly-formed DFL almost succeeded in endorsing Wallace for President. It was a bloody fight and really taints Humphrey’s repuataion as far as I’m concerned.
Incidentally, Wellstone was from the FL wing of the DFL, but if he’d said so no one would have known what he meant.
Latent in Delton’s book is that civil rights was the payoff to the left for accepting the Cold War and corporate liberalism. Truman might be another example. But most of the racists were not populists, they were Bourbon Democrats who opposed much of the New Deal. And most of the populists in 1948 and thereabouts were not racists. (Right before and during WWII a lot of populists were voted out of office and some isolationists joined the Republican Party. So in 1948 the official populist wing was weak; you’re really just talking about a fair-sized voting demographic.)
October 11, 2009 at 2:17 pm
The enemies of the Rawlsians are the various sorts of anti-egalitarians, but Democrats are not Rawlsians. I’m not well-informed about Rawls and have no idea whether he allows for oppositional political struggle. As I’ve said many times, viewed from a distance Rawls seems oddly detached from history and from actual politics and the things actually at stake. That’s my criticism of Charles Taylor so far too.
One of the realities of actual politics and actual history is that a frightening proportion of the big players are con men, narcissists, megalomaniacs, and/or sociopaths.
October 11, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I don’t really pretend to get what Rawls is getting at. I was just wondering how a real-world Rawlsian would deal with an old-school conservative who positively advocated arbitrary authority and inequality and worked toward those goals.
October 11, 2009 at 5:44 pm
I originally saw your post at Open Left and was intrigued about the possibility you mention at the end of a grassroots populist movement to take over the Democratic Party leadership from the bottom up.
I wrote a response over at my blog which deals with the types of problems such a movement needs to overcome to be successful.
The problems I cite are:
1) The one of “selling” a tainted Democratic brand as it relates to populism and populist-related economic issues.
2) Third parties and other Populists in alternative politics — do they have a role to play in an insurgent populist movement?
3) The “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” factor — how to attract socially conservative, working class whites into a left-wing movement?
4) Structural electoral reforms as a staring point — fusion, instant runoff and other forms of voting, ballot access, etc.
Great discussion here and at Open Left!
October 11, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Kepp it cool, boys.
October 12, 2009 at 1:17 am
The economy consists of corporate oligarchies fighting against huge trade unions
No it doesn’t.
October 12, 2009 at 1:38 am
The Republican hard core is about 30%. Forget them. The target would be the 50% in the middle.
Obviously the target will not be farmers in bib overalls, who are a tiny demographic, or even factory workers. It probably wouldn’t be country people either, since they’re 20%.
“Populist” would mean campaigning against Wall Street, finance, and various other super-rich.
Redefining the argument on economic rather than cultural grounds would be a key.
This would require that tomorrow’s electorate won’t be the same as today’s, which is true both demographically and also individual-to-individual. People do change, but you have to make an attempt to communicate with them. Your conviction that tomorrow will be like today, and the satisfaction you take in hopelessness, both speak ill of you.
Populism is impossible for the present Democrats because they’ve been bought, as I’ve said.
Your belief that unions are powerful betray your winger roots.
October 12, 2009 at 1:58 am
The unions are corporate but not powerful, winger dude.
October 12, 2009 at 3:09 am
As I’m sure has been pointed out already, the Populists of the late 19th Century were members not of some “Populist Party” but of the People’s Party. Names are powerful, and we owe it to our ancestors to remember them as the People’s Party, the name under which they organized and the cause which they believed in – the People.
October 12, 2009 at 9:35 am
One unstated premise of my piece is that the finance Humpty Humpty is in a lot worse condition than is immediately evident, and that the only ones presently capable of responding to disaster are the hard faux-populist right. I don’t see Zizekians or Rawlsians responding effectively.
It’s not surprising that the right has a response prepared whereas the center and left don’t, since disaster was their plan (Shock Doctrine). The permanent military crisis is in place, the police state powers are in place, and the backloaded fiscal-financial crisis is nigh..
That sounds like “The Worse, The Better”, except that I have little optimism. I remember people hoping for a revolutionary crisis 40 years ago, but those people are old or dead by now.
You seem to assume continued prosperity, and with continued prosperity we would indeed presumably have business as usual. But even during prosperity there have been a lot of people left out or sliding downhill, and a considerable amount of unfocussed political anger.
Pretty much by definition, no political movement is ever predicted. The political equivalent of the efficient markets thesis always predicts stability. Right now liberals are crossing their fingers and praying, because if things get really bad I don’t think they have a backup plan.
People are talking about a second stimulus to supplement the first stimulus that they thought was inadequate. What are the chance they’ll get it? Obama will recruit Coburn, Kyl, and DeMint onto his stimulus panel so it will be bipartisan.
October 12, 2009 at 9:40 am
Greg: the term “Populist” was coined by the Populists themselves, in order to have a noun for an individual member of the party. They couldn’t say “I’m a People”.
5150″ The unions have been losing steadily since about 1970. They do have little pockets of strength, which upset a lot of wingers. The whole idea of “countervailing powers” was always wrong. Without full government support, the unions dwindle. They were never on a par with industry, and only did well when they were collaborating with industry.
October 12, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Ad hom, per usual when you’re upset or losing an argument.
Well, GM did get its bailout – in some measure because of the unions. But the idea that unions are 1. powerful and 2. malefactors on the same scale as corporations is, at least, counterintuitive.
Emerson isn’t guilty of ad hominen here, just shorthand: What else do you call someone who sets up false equivalences with the idea of downplaying the distinctions between the powerful and the non-powerful? Winger seems reasonable.
In a sensible polity, I might be somewhat right of center myself. I’m a supporter of unions because they’re a market-based mechanism, and I like markets. Thus, public employee unions are, I think, a problem. But geez, in this polity, public employee unions hardly seem worth mentioning as a problem.
October 12, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Maybe it’s just that Rawls doesn’t have his Xenophon yet (as Socrates had his Xenophon), but it’s interesting in how completely abstract ToJ is. How do we get this veil to actually exist? Has any such veil ever existed, even once? This is problematic even when we compare Rawls with someone like Hobbes – both are quite abstract, but Hobbes can and does point to actual political examples – and, here’s the crux, Hobbes aims fairly low while Rawls aims higher than anyone else. We can readily imagine a Hobbesian commonwealth. We can even perhaps see Maimonides is going when he says that Moses was the Platonic philosopher-king (and thus that philosopher-kings are perhaps possible if rare). Are there any equivalents for Rawls?
October 12, 2009 at 6:51 pm
John, Thank you for posting your piece. It’s interesting and deals with an important topic. I have a scholarly book that came out a few years ago–Where Did the Party Go?–that traces the devolution of the Democratic Party from Bryan populism to Humphrey elitism during the mid-1900s. Humphrey seemed like a good contrast to Bryan since both were midwesterners and perennial presidential candidates, and both had populist/progressive reputations. The substance of their politics was very different, however. While Bryan followed in the footsteps of Jefferson, Humphrey was almost completely Hamiltonian in policy. The true populists in Minnesota in the 1940s were folks like Governor Elmer Benson.
October 12, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I’m opposed to laissez-faire (as was Rawls). Poli-football isn’t
This is a misreading. For one thing, I agree with Emerson that, absent government support, unions aren’t really viable.
October 13, 2009 at 12:32 am
the dumbass called “Perezoso”.
See now that’s an ad hominem. Or maybe just namecalling. But given your record, Mr. 5150, I don’t really think you’re in a position to complain.
abb1, it’s true that it’s partly the success of unions that has rendered them less powerful – and part of that success has been legislative (the 40-hour week, minimum wage, etc.).
A story: I don’t know what the current state of Fedex unionism is, but 20 years ago I used to run across a lot of Fedex workers in different situations. To a man (or woman) they told me what a great place Fedex was to work – good wages, benefits, reasonable hours, etc.
Fedex wasn’t a union shop. But the reason they weren’t bad to work for is that they were afraid of the unions. Back when I was knowledgeable about Fedex, unions couldn’t get any traction. (I gather things have changed.)
Unions are inevitably going to be weakened by their success, but they didn’t err in lobbying for the minimum wage. They got screwed by a corporate legislative and regulatory agenda. It is no exaggeration to say that if a corporation fires a union organizer nowadays, there is effectively no legal penalty. That’s not a set of conditions under which unions can thrive.
So what’s really killing unions isn’t legislative success, it’s legislative failure.
October 13, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Let’s see proof or a cite that unions have declined in strength,
This is uncontroversial. My first three Google hits were here, here and here.
As I said, the regulatory and legal environment for unions has become dismal. You seem to say that the unions have supported this new regulatory regime, which is nonsense.
Only in winger imaginations and on Fox News are unions powerful and menacing – though I certainly grant that public employee unions create specific problems.
October 13, 2009 at 3:38 pm
ToS, I said this:
Unions … got screwed by a corporate legislative and regulatory agenda.
To which you responded thus:
opposing the “regulatory agenda,” eh? Most unionists–not to say Demos– favor regulatory agenda).
Now that’s either gibberish, a lie, or it means this:
You seem to say that the unions have supported this new regulatory regime, which is nonsense.
If I’ve misinterpreted you, it’s only because I’m disinclined to accuse someone of gibberish or lies. In retrospect, this seems unnecessarily rigid of me, and in the future I’ll remember your style.
I’ve been in union meetings. I strongly doubt that you or Abby Himmler ever have.
Your doubts would be incorrect in my case. I promise you, if all you’ve done is carried a union card and sat in union meetings, I’ve got a lot more direct union experience than you do.
But so what? My experience may incline me to think certain things, and allow me to know about certain things, but everything I’ve said is publicly checkable. I’m certainly not going to make any appeal to my authority here.
And I certainly won’t make an appeal to my Cartmanesque authori-tay, as you do.
October 13, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Seizure Response Dog was the name of my surf rock band in college.
October 13, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Can you guys dial down on the bullshitting, please? This thread went to total shit after I left yesterday.
October 13, 2009 at 7:42 pm
“I’m off to Basel tomorrow, no trolling for me for a couple of days.”
Take some time to look at Grunewald’s Small Crucifixion at the Kunstmuseum.
October 14, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I’ve been off the net since Sunday evening (equipment malfunction). When I come back in a few days I’ll be deleting a lot quicker. My intention for this blog wasn’t to provide a playpen for you guys.
October 16, 2009 at 5:22 pm
“Populism is the idea that there is a wholesome “people” that is being betrayed, sabotaged, ripped-off, corrupted, etc. by a bunch of evil *WASPs* (replace with your own favorite evil group). Populism rejects the idea of any structural flaws, “the people” would do just fine if not for this group of evil saboteurs (”they”).”
Assuming that’s true (and I’m not sure I’m in agreement with it), isn’t this also Machiavelli’s implicit analysis as well? I think Machiavelli’s interpetation of Florentine populism in Florentine Histories would support Zizek here.
October 19, 2009 at 3:42 pm
While my computer was down this thread got taken over by a mostly off-topic personal feud. No one is banned, but as I said once all ready, keep it cool.
Everyone should note the new comments policy at the top.
October 19, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Jeff Taylor, you got lost in the shuffle, but I’ll be getting your book.
October 19, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Thanks, John. Yes, I did get lost in the shuffle. I’m not sure what the shuffle was even about! Based on the observations you’ve made on this site, I think you’ll find the book interesting. I’d be interested to hear what you think if you have a chance to look at it. -Jeff
October 19, 2009 at 9:45 pm
I’ll get the book and post about it fairly soon.
October 19, 2009 at 9:55 pm
If ou’re still there, Taylor, have you read Jennifer Delton’s book? I loved it.
I just read Elmer Benson’s bio. An impressive guy, but not a good politicians.
A bygone age, alas.
October 20, 2009 at 6:17 pm
John, I have not read Delton’s book. I just looked at the summary on the publisher’s website. I can see why you find it interesting. I’m intrigued by what you write above: “Latent in Delton’s book is that civil rights was the payoff to the left for accepting the Cold War and corporate liberalism.” I don’t doubt that for a minute. Humphrey was a man of sincerity, but his sincerity was laced with loads of pragmatism. He could pal around with Lester Maddox when political necessity demanded it, for example. Yes, a bygone age. Do you live in Minnesota? I used to live in Rochester.
October 20, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I live in central MN halfway between MPLS and Fargo. I grew up here and returned when I retired.
You really have to read Delton’s book. I hope she writes more. She’s young and the book looks like a dissertation writeup.
October 25, 2009 at 12:53 am
But in either case they are consistent. The State and Society are at best a nuisance and worst a serious problem. Right?
Like most philosophy, it ignores many blatant facts, such that both State and Society are needed, within defined limits, in order for the market to exist. But of course, the real objective isn’t clear thinking but to lay the ideological groundwork for the destruction of forces that reduce profits such as activism and regulation.
October 25, 2009 at 1:01 am
The State and Society are at best a nuisance and worst a serious problem. Right?
No, both of them both enable and constrain. The stateless societyless condition would be impoverished.
October 25, 2009 at 1:46 am
I feel, but can be easily persuaded otherwise in this case, that a “third party” is a better idea than a transformation of one of the existing parties. That the best thing is a complete abandonment of all hopes for the Democratic Party. Let’s build the party we want from scratch rather than have our objectives derailed at every turn because of the inevitable “compromise” (selling out) with incumbent party hacks we be constantly asked to make.
The third party would loose for years or decades, but it would have to push the main parties to the left regardless of “electability” by putting their policies in a new perspective and giving people a serious alternative they might vote for instead.
(By the way, a previous post I made seems to have ended up here rather than the following post by mistake…my apologies for that.)
October 26, 2009 at 9:37 pm
This will come up again, but there’s one big advantage to going through an existing party. First you knock out the Democrats one-on-one, and then you go up against the Reoublicans one-on-one. It isn’t as simple as that, but basically going against two guys is harder than one.
Most thrid party success included a greater or lesser degree of fusion with one party or the other, or sometimes both in alternation. The third party would stay out of some races, the democrats would stay out of different races, and the Republicans would have to run against both.
In Minnesota, two different supposed “spoiler” candidate were actually elected to Congress — a Populist named Kittel Halvorsen around 1892, who had been financed by the Republican to beat the Democrat, but who later beat the Republican in the general; and a Farmer-Labor affiliated Communist in 1936, who had been supported in the FL primary by the Republican, because the Republican was afraid of and even worse FL campaigner.
More here: https://trollblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/the-best-congressional-election-ever/
August 29, 2015 at 5:25 pm
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September 3, 2016 at 10:00 pm
I hardly leave remarks, however after reading a few of the remarks here
What is populism, and why is the Democratic Party
so afraid of it? | Trollblog. I actually do have a couple of
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Could you make a list of the complete urls of your social
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twitter feed, or linkedin profile?