Here is something Thomas Frank wrote back in March 2004:
There was a time, of course, when populism was the native tongue of the American left, when working-class people could be counted on to vote in favor of stronger labor unions, a regulated economy and various schemes for universal economic security. Back then the Republicans, who opposed all these things, were clearly identified as the party of corporate management, the spokesmen for society’s elite.
Republicans are still the party of corporate management, but they have also spent years honing their own populist approach, a melange of anti-intellectualism, promiscuous God-talk and sentimental evocations of middle America in all its humble averageness.
We’re all familiar with this. The latter paragraph explains the success of George W. Bush as a politician. But Bush’s brush-clearing populism was something qualitatively different from real right-wing populism. You can see Bushism’s uneasy fit with real right-wing populism by looking at its Wiki definition.
The strategy of right-wing populism relies on a combination of ethno-nationalism with anti-elitist populist rhetoric and a radical critique of existing political institutions.
Right-wing populist parties and movements differ from many far right parties in that they accept representative democracy and disavow violent political tactics. They are considered radical because they oppose the current welfare state and the present political system; right-wing because they oppose aspects of social democracy and have traditional policies on immigration; and populist because they appeal to the fears and frustrations of common citizens. These parties and movements sometimes distinguish themselves from the traditional Right by their support for social welfare programmes, gender equality, gay rights, and separation of church and state. These parties often present themselves as the defenders of traditional liberal ideas. Other RRP parties wish to preserve the dominance of the Christian values as a means of preserving the national culture.
There are some contradictions in that definition, but it’s pretty clear that Bush didn’t offer a radical critique of existing domestic political institutions. He actually advanced fairly reasonable (pro-business/anti-populist) immigration policies. He expanded the welfare state through the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit and the role of the federal government in education through No Child Left Behind. Bushism was radical, but its radicalism came mostly from its disdain for the post-war consensus on collective security and international institutions. On the domestic front, their radicalism was not so much on social policy as on how they went about their business. They hired wholly unqualified people filling the bureaucracy with hacks and cronies, they politicized the judiciary, and they let national security concerns upend the consensus on how our entire system of justice functions. They were radical in many respects, but not so much in a populist way.
They weren’t consistently conservative in the traditional sense and they weren’t consistently populist in a radical sense. But the Tea Party Movement is definitely populist in the radical sense. The Tea Partiers are offering a radical critique of existing political institutions. They are fueled by xenophobic and traditional Christian cultural concerns. They are literally common citizens expressing their fears and frustrations. Perhaps ‘critique’ isn’t the best word to describe what they’re offering. Their message is more inchoate than articulated. But it’s genuine populism of the right-wing variety, and it has a certain level of potency.
Learned observers are still divided about whether the Tea Parties signify a new energy on the right or are more an indication of the right’s collapse. But one of the things that makes them dangerous is that there is no counterpart on the left. What’s gone is this:
There was a time, of course, when populism was the native tongue of the American left, when working-class people could be counted on to vote in favor of stronger labor unions, a regulated economy and various schemes for universal economic security. Back then the Republicans, who opposed all these things, were clearly identified as the party of corporate management, the spokesmen for society’s elite.
Right now, the left is looking at the Democratic Party and asking why they are too much resembling the party of corporate management. But I think this is an anachronistic way of judging where we stand politically as a nation. We have a two-party system that is driven by the first past the post winner-take-all federal elections that were created by our Constitution. But one-party proved unworthy of support during the Bush years. No elite element of our society, from the scientific community, to the intelligentsia, to the business community, to the military and intelligence community, to the federal bureaucracy were able to support the Republican Party by the time Bush’s presidency ended. The rise of Palinism only made matters worse. The Democratic Party ceased being the party for the left and became the party for the entire Establishment. Outwardly, Obama campaigned as a traditional Democrat, appealing to traditional Democratic constituencies. But, in reality, he took on the job as savior for the entire system, which was literally failing so badly after September 2008 that the whole world was feeling the strain.
It became obvious even before Obama took office that the left was confused about the direction Obama was moving. They had hoped that he would bring radical change, and radical change in a consistently leftward direction. But his mission wasn’t to satisfy a laundry list of progressive desires. His mission was to keep the teetering edifice of global American power from collapsing. This naturally put Obama in the awkward position of defending and protecting many elements of the American system that rightly deserved their comeuppance.
The problem is that the Democratic Party has a bigger responsibility right now than to enact this or that policy. The Democratic Party is the only organization standing in this country that can be trusted to serve the interests of business or labor or the big guy or the little guy. Their job is to fill the void left by the intellectual collapse of America’s right as well as to represent their traditional constituencies. Above all, it is their responsibility to keep the Republican Party out of power.
And, the breadth of this responsibility makes it impossible to do several things that need doing. First, they must simultaneously represent elite financial interests while reforming and regulating them. They must protect our intelligence and military institutions at a time that they should be held to account for their performance under Bush. And, politically, they must find a way to channel populist frustration during difficult economic times when they are still trying to keep the Bretton Woods system running.
I’ve only scratched the surface here. But I think these ideas help explain the way the Democratic Party is behaving, why the left is frustrated, why the right is having some success with a populist message, and why the left is having trouble responding.
Rather than go on, I’ll save other ideas for the comments.
