Leftist Populism

"Washington is working great--fabulously--for the wealthy and the well connected. They bought the government they want. They have bought the rules that they want. I think that Washington ought to work for everybody else. . . . We are talking about a system that is fundamentally corrupt."

                                        Elizabeth Warren, speaking on MSNBC, Jan 2

Elizabeth Warren

Democrats have rediscovered populism. 

During the Reagan era Democrats created a movement within the party called the Third Way. The so-called New Democrats shared ideas within the Democratic Leadership Council, the DLC. They were socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and comfortable working with businesses. Bill Clinton won with this. He was centrist. Moderate. The economy expanded.

Meanwhile problems festered. The rich got richer. Others did not.

Hillary in 2016--did not complain about billionaires. They had billionaire friends. There were good and bad billionaires, based on whether they were pro or anti environment, pro or anti social issues. Third Way Democrats could compete with Republicans for campaign dollars from their own donors, liberal elites. For Hillary in 2016, income distribution and the concentration of wealth weren't  the problem; prejudice was the problem. That is what kept poor people struggling, she said.

Bernie Sanders changed all that. His campaign articulated a distinction: Hillary was a liberal elitist, and part of the problem. They enable and continue the economic war against the poor. Sanders said the essential problem was economic concentration against the 90% or 99%, including all ethnicities and genders.  Moreover, Sanders showed he could fund a campaign without big donor money. He crowd-sourced money from the internet. White Democrats favored Sanders over Hillary. Sanders was a major force for re-aligning the Democratic message.

Left populism. Elizabeth Warren just filed paperwork for her Exploratory Campaign. She voiced unabashed populist message. She punches up.  

     “The problem we’ve got right now in Washington is that it works great for those who’ve got money to buy influence, and I’m fighting against that. And you bet it’s going to make a lot of people unhappy. But at the end of the day, I don’t go to Washington to work for them.”

She expresses solidarity with the common man and positions the wealthy and powerful people as malevolent in some of their practices:

     "In our county, if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to take care of yourself and the people you love. It's the fundamental promise of America. A promise that should be true for everyone. I've spent my career finding out why America's promise works for some families, but others who work just as hard slip through the cracks into disaster. And what I've found is terrifying. These aren't 'cracks.' They are 'traps.' America's middle class is under attack."

Warren is strategic. She is going to Iowa early, and she is hoping to elbow out two plausible Democratic candidates, billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. The populist strategy is for this to be a battle of leftist populism against a billionaire Trump, not a choice between rival billionaires.

     "I don’t think we ought to be running campaigns that are funded by billionaires, whether it goes through super PACs or their own money that they’re spending. Democrats are the party of the people.”

Warren comes into this race with credentials at least as good as Sanders' for a populist message, but without the mixed blessing of Sanders' large base of loyal supporters. A Sanders candidacy reprises old battles. I observe an appetite for new faces. A Warren candidacy makes the voter choice one more focused on right-populism versus left-populism, and less on labels of "Socialist" and past intra-party grievances. But she isn't really a new face, nor a young one.

CLICK: Showdown: Left Populism vs. Right Populism

Trump's populism of the right targets outsiders who would infect and weaken the healthy social order--invader immigrants, uppity blacks, feminists with a chip on their shoulder--and the cultural, media, and academic elites who support those people. It is a cultural battle. A great many people want to fight that battle. They consider themselves under attack from cultural elites.

Warren's populism of the left points to the economic elites who rigged the system to monopolize wealth and keep poor people poor. It is an economic battle. Maybe it really is the economy, stupid.

Left populism has the advantage of allowing Warren or other candidates with that message to speak of culture war reconciliation, with whites and blacks, men and women in a common cause. It reduces identity politics as an issue. Right populists will argue the opposite, saying Warren is pushing "class warfare," dividing employee from employer. They will say that she is attacking the wealth of billionaires, but in reality she will connive to confiscate the wealth of the middle class, too.

Warren may have the rhetorical skills and biography to neutralize that line of attack. She grew up poor in Oklahoma. Her career and message expresses opportunity, not resentment. Her challenge will be to get that message out. Trump and his allies will say she hates rich people and that this includes nearly everyone.

It is too early in the campaign to guess whether this will be the prime fault-line on election day, but if Warren and Trump are the two nominees, then my prediction is that we will see a choice between left and right populism. 

Warren will talk of economic opportunity and fairness, and the corruption within the Trump orbit. Trump will talk about culture war resentments and accuse Warren of wanting to take your money to give to the lazy, the improvident, and immigrants.