America's Political Spectrum Is Not Left to Right, It's Top to Bottom—And It has Failed the People

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/americas-political-spectrum-not-left-right-its-top-bottom-and-it-has-failed



My father, W.F. "High" Hightower, was a populist. Only, he didn't know it. Didn't know the word, much less the history or anything about populism's democratic ethos. My father was not philosophical, but he had a phrase that he used to express the gist of his political beliefs: "Everybody does better when everybody does better ."

Before the populists of the late 1800s gave its instinctive rebelliousness a name, it had long been established as a defining trait of our national character: The 1776 rebellion was not only against King George III's government but against the corporate tyranny of such British monopolists as the East India Trading Company.

The establishment certainly doesn't celebrate the populist spirit, and our educational system avoids bothering students with our vibrant, human story of constant battles, big and small, mounted by "little people" against ... well, against the establishment. The Keepers of the Corporate Order take care to avoid even a suggestion that there is an important political pattern -- a historic continuum -- that connects Thomas Paine's radical democracy writings in the late 1700s to Shays' Rebellion in 1786, to strikes by mill women and carpenters in the early 1800s, to Jefferson's 1825 warning about the rising aristocracy of banks and corporations "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman," to the launching of the women's suffrage movement at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the maverick Texans who outlawed banks in their 1845 state constitution, to the bloody and ultimately successful grassroots struggle for the abolition of slavery, and to the populist movement itself, plus the myriad rebellions that followed right into our present day.

WHAT POPULISM IS NOT: An empty word for lazy reporters to attach to any angry spasm of popular discontent. (And it's damn sure not Sarah Palin and today's clique of Koch-funded, corporate-hugging, tea party Republicans.)

WHAT IT IS: For some 238 years, it has been the chief political impulse in America's body politick -- determinedly democratic, vigilantly resistant to the oppressive power of corporations and Wall Street, committed to grassroots percolate-up economics, and firmly rooted in my old daddy's concept of "Everybodyness," recognizing that we're all in this together.

[djean111]

1. AND....when politicians push things like the TPP but give "populist" speeches - they are not

populists. They are giving populist speeches because it seems the thing to do at the time.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[pampango]

13. True but opposing the TPP does not make one a populist either.

The John Birch Society opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming it violated the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped individual states' rights to enact laws regarding civil rights. The society opposes "one world government", and it has an immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It opposes the United Nations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and other free trade agreements. They argue the U.S. Constitution has been devalued in favor of political and economic globalization, and that this alleged trend is not accidental. It cited the existence of the former Security and Prosperity Partnership as evidence of a push towards a North American Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

Poll: conservative and moderate republicans oppose fast track (for the TPP) by a ratio of 85 percent or higher.

On the question of fast-track authority, 62 percent of respondent opposed the idea, with 43 percent “strongly” opposing it. Broken down by political affiliation, only Democrats that identify as “liberal” strongly favor the idea. Predictably, a strong Republican majority oppose giving the president such authority, with both conservative and moderates oppose it by a ratio of 85 percent or higher.

http://www.ibtimes.com/trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-poll-only-strongest-obama-supporters-want-him-have-fast-track-1552039

[Enthusiast]

3. Kicked and recommended!

Thank you, xchrom.

[TBF]

4. Straight up. K&R nt

[FailureToCommunicate]

5. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for this, xchrom.

[xchrom]

6. ...

[pampango]

7. Here's an article from last year on left/right populism vs the establishment

Going for Bolingbroke

American politics is no longer best understood in the left-right terms that defined 20th-century debates. Rather, our landscape looks more like a much earlier phase in democracy’s development, when the division that mattered was between outsiders and insiders, the “country party” and the “court party.”

As theories go, it’s well suited to the times. The story of the last decade in American life is, indeed, a story of consolidation and self-dealing at the top. There really is a kind of “court party” in American politics, whose shared interests and assumptions — interventionist, corporatist, globalist — have stamped the last two presidencies and shaped just about every major piece of Obama-era legislation. There really is a disconnect between this elite’s priorities and those of the country as a whole. There really is a sense in which the ruling class — in Washington, especially — has grown fat at the expense of the nation it governs.

The problem for conservatives isn’t their critique of this court party and its works. Rather, it’s their failure to understand why many Americans can agree with this critique but still reject the Republican alternative.

... as much as Americans may distrust a cronyist liberalism, they prefer it to a conservatism that doesn’t seem interested in governing at all. This explains why Republicans could win the battle for public opinion on President Obama’s first-term agenda without persuading the public to actually vote him out of office. The sense that Obama was at least trying to solve problems, whereas the right offered only opposition, was powerful enough to overcome disappointment with the actual results.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/opinion/sunday/douthat-going-for-bolingbroke.html?_r=0

[cantbeserious]

8. The Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks Own And Control The Politicians That Own And Control Us

The people be damned - Oligarchy and Empire must be protected at all costs.

[joshdawg]

9. K & R

.

[brooklynite]

10. What a ridiculous premise...

Show me the evidence that all wealthy people are conservative and all poor people are liberal....

[fasttense]

15. There are numerous studies out there that show the wealthy are more likely to be conservative

Of course it is NOT EVERYONE. There a few rich people who are liberal in some ways and poor people who are conservative. Like the fool down the road from me who lives in a falling apart mobile home, barely has enough money to drive his 20 year old truck, but had Mitt Romney signs on the little bit of yard he had.

Here is just one study: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/feb/06/winning-lottery-makes-you-more-conservative

Do a Google search, you will find the others.

[bullwinkle428]

11. K&R for the painful truth.

[geek tragedy]

12. Demonstrably false faux- populist nonsense.

Geography and race are much better predictors of voting behavior than income.

If the premise were true, Connecticut would be solidly Republican and Alabama would be electing socialists.

[fasttense]

17. You are assuming there are NO poor people in Connecticut

and No rich people with out-sized influence in Alabama.

But survey the top 300 families with the most wealth in the US and you'll be lucky to get 1% of them to claim they are liberal.

[geek tragedy]

19. Affluent people in CT vote Democratic.

Poor white people in AL vote Republican.

Everyone thinks that if Democrats just catered to their ideological subset of the population, victory would be guaranteed.

[Fred Sanders]

14. I always find it hilarious that tea people folk have a cult built on historical corporate tyranny

rebellion not government tyranny, built on a lie.....kind of ironic, nay, fitting, since their whole cult is based on a massive deception.

[WillyT]

16. K & R !!!

[ReRe]

18. K&R

Jim uses that term that our word-police doesn't care for, i.e. "Congress Critters."

"Everybody does better when everybody does better." Well, that's the way it's supposed to be, but the trickle-down no-regulation capitalist machine is irrecoverably broken and really never worked from the beginning of it's advent back in the '80s. We need a new machine. One that brings prosperity to all bodies, not just the bodies at the top.