Time to take back "populism" from Teabaggers and Palinites who've kidnapped it to only mean less government and taxes. Democrats need to define a phrase and philosophy that tells Independents we're on your side.
This blog post is about language -- a phrase actually. For policy wonks, please read blogs and books by Krugman, Stiglitz, Reich, Kuttner, Warren, Galbraith, Borosage.
Or, if you think rhetoric is below your pay grade, I'd ask you to consider the conceptual power of Lenin's "land, bread and peace," FDR's "New Deal," "Reagan's "tear down this wall," Bush 43's "PATRIOT Act," Clinton's "mend it don't end it," Obama's "change you can believe in," and Republicans who are "pro-life" and against "death taxes" and "death panels." As Drew Westen has written so well, winning narratives and phrases are the lenses through which we see the past and future.
The problem with "populism" is that it now has two meanings, and only one can prevail. Any word that includes Ross Perot, Sarah Palin, Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader begs for clarification. For example, if right-wing organizations hypothetically came up with a program that could create five million jobs and reduce our debt by half, would they call it, say, "The New Frontier"?
Historically, populism has referred to popular movements that pressured leaders from the bottom up to respond to grievances, whether from farmers in the late 1890s or workers in the 1930s or anti-tax conservatives behind Prop 13 in 1978. But some strains also include unsavory characters, whose appeals have exploited racist and anti-immigrant sentiments. Given the intensity and decibels of conservative talkers in 2010, confusion now is not the friend of smart, fact-based, progressive policy.
Hence "pocketbook populism." It properly stresses that Democrats alone have a workable plan that can help pull us out of the ditch of Bush's Great Recession, that boosts middle class families and consumers, and that focuses relentlessly on the economy, not culture wars. Its widespread and repeated use is consistent with David Plouffe's analysis that "politics is a comparative exercise...a choice."
Other venues can debate the finer points. But by and large the essential elements of a progressive economic program are well developed; here are a baker's dozen: a strong Consumer Finance Protection Agency; the Volker Rule restricting speculation by commercial banks; bills to tax too-big-to-fail banks and cut them down to size; financial cramdowns to reduce loan balances to underwater borrowers; infrastructure investments for jobs; tax hikes on the wealthiest to pay for essential services (as Oregon just voted for); campaign finance reform after Citizens United (public funding, shareholders' votes, a ban on corporate political spending by federal contractors); say-on-pay corporate governance changes; health care reform ideally with a "consumer option" (can I sue for political malpractice whoever came up with the words "public option," which ratifies the option as just more big government?); perhaps even pay-go budgeting; and I'd also throw in the appointment of a White House "Consumer Czar," as existed from JFK to Clinton.
President Obama, while holding out the olive branch of "bipartisanship" with one hand, has recently gone on the offensive, pushing such popular and populist values and ideas. These separate proposals, however, are more a list than a theme. And a theme -- like "stop big government" -- beats a list every time.
"Pocketbook Populism" will not convince conservatives who, as Bill Clinton once put it, "love their country but hate their government." Nor will it persuade high-brows like columnist David Brooks, who impute the motive of "class warfare" to any proposal questioning economic power in America, as if there hasn't been a net shift of trillions of dollars from capital to labor because of the fiscal and regulatory policies of Reagan and the Bushes. Nor will it significantly shift opinion among core Democrats and Republicans, since 80% of Democrats favor Obama while only 15% of Republicans do.
But there are millions of unaffiliated, independent Americans -- a plurality now in the country -- who question both business and government elites and who want real answers to severe economic problems. When they vote two-thirds for Barack Obama, he wins; when they vote two-thirds for Scott Brown, Brown wins.
Pocketbook Populism is my candidate for the phrase that can harness the current mad-as-hell zeitgeist, seize the rhetorical and political high ground, expose Republicans as the party of either no or stale ideas on the economy, and educate Independents who's really for average Americans and who's for unlimited corporate political spending.
If a reader has a better phrase or narrative, please send in your comments below and let the Obama White House know. Tell Reid and Pelosi and their caucuses. But if we allow Tea Partiers and the Far Fright to capture the current populist sentiment, it won't be a defeat so much as a surrender.
