In the 1890s, remember, Populism was a movement of the left, fighting “the elite” by demanding things like a federal farm program, national ownership of the railroads, fair play for labor unions, an income tax, and a fiat currency. (All things which were partially achieved in later years.) In his essay,
White angrily berated these radical Kansans for making the state look bad in the eyes of big money and thus for bringing economic ruin (sound familiar?). It was a powerful piece of work, and it became an instant classic, reprinted in huge numbers by the McKinley campaign for use against the Democratic and Populist candidate, William Jennings Bryan.
Today’s conservative Kansas rebels are politically the exact opposite of the rebels of 1896, trying to reverse or destroy the achievements of their ancestors. They most definitely are bringing ruin on the state.
And yet while they do so they constantly use the class-war language of populism, always depicting Republicanism as a movement of regular folks overthrowing the haughty impositions of the “liberal elite.” The worst offender in this regard is George Bush himself, who complains about being the victim of liberal-elite snobbery even while he works to make the country’s real elite more of an elite than ever. His political managers, meanwhile, love to compare their man to the pro-business William McKinley, the guy who beat the original Populists, even while they endlessly salute the “heartland” values of red-state America.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June04/Frank0614.htmhttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas+thomas+frank&btnG=SearchWe can easily turn this back to our advantage - EXCEPT - our elected officials, are, in fact, "liberal elites" "limo liberals" and the like. Of course, so was FDR, but it worked for him.
The difference now is that FDR actually proposed helping the working class in America, while modern Democrats are either a) socially far to the left of your average Ameican, and/or b) culutally similar to most Americans but support economic measures that will hurt the middle class - service cuts, "free trade", outsourcing, offshoring, etc.
"Moderate" and "Centrist" "DLC" Democrats think they can build a coalition on social/cultural issues alone, and win the favor of Wall Street and get good coverage on the corporate media if they are pro-corporate and pro-wealthy. While a superstar like Clinton could pull it off, the party can't, and we have been losing clout ever since the Democrats went "fiscally conservative" under Carter (yes, Carter, the first "neo-liberal").
Dean was going in the right direction (reluctantly I think). Clark had some very decent tax proposals (and then screwed himself by suggesting it's no big deal if we send all of our programming jobs to India). But so far, no one in the Democratic party seems to "get it" yet.
We have two years to run a slate of populist, progressive, anti-elitist candidates in the 2006 Congressional elections. Nationalizing the effort (like Contract on America) will help us. The DLC and the DNC not only will not try to help this slate, but will actively oppose it. The corporate media will treat them as crazy lunatics. But it's very possible to win if we do it right.
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