Populism Rising?

[marmar]

Populism Rising?

Friday, 27 December 2013 10:34
By Robert Borosage, Campaign for America's Future | News Analysis


The Beltway crowd has discovered populism. Senator Elizabeth Warren's surging popularity from her aggressive defense of Social Security and demand for Wall Street accountability has triggered talk of a populist challenge to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Bill De Blasio indicted New York's gilded age inequality in his stunning victory in the New York Mayoral race. This month, President Obama returned to his campaign themes, delivering a speech calling inequality "the defining challenge of our time."

Republicans, preoccupied with their Tea Party zealots, mostly have avoided joining the debate, but the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party raised the alarm. In an incoherent article appropriately placed in the Wall Street Journal, the New Democrats at the Third Way scorned Warren for defending Social Security and Medicare and peddling a "dead end" "we can have it all fantasy." They beat a hasty retreat when they were slapped down by Neera Tanden, head of the Obama New Dem Center for American Progress, who then labored to paint Bill Clinton – Bill Clinton – as a populist. Gaseous Bill Keller of the New York Times weighed in for what he called the "center-left" against the "left-left" of Warren et al with arguments immediately dismembered by economist Dean Baker.


These are but the opening skirmishes of what is likely to be a fierce battle inside and outside the Democratic Party. Populism, by definition, doesn't trickle down from the top. It spreads as a bottom up movement that chooses and elevates its own leaders. It doesn't spread because Elizabeth Warren is espousing politically toxic and unpopular ideas, as the Third Wayers charged. Rather Warren is threatening because she champions attitudes and ideas that enjoy widespread popularity outside the beltway, but are slighted inside of it.

Populist movements grow out of popular discontent. For over thirty years, inequality has been growing. Profits and productivity and CEO salaries have risen, but workers haven't shared in the growth. But hard times, as Lawrence Goodwyn, the great historian of the Populist Movement notes, do not generate democratic movements. Times have been "hard" for most people for a long time. When families lose ground, people tend to believe that they are at fault, that their luck has been bad, that they made the wrong choices. They work harder; they take on debt; they get by. Resignation and deference are normal. Movements start only when reality – and organizers – begin to open people's eyes. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20882-populism-rising

[Laelth]

1. Let us hope that reality is opening the eyes of many Americans. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[blue14u]

2. I'm willing to step

up and help organize a populist movement.

We need some changes made, and we need it fast!

[valerief]

3. Occupy gave us the words. Poverty gives us the will. nt

[Demeter]

4. The Elites Can't Fathom "Populism"

unless they have manufactured it by limiting the 99% choices in food, drink, entertainment, etc. to improve profits.

They would recognize rebellion, though, and pitchforks and torches...

[99Forever]

5. Excellent read!

Thanks Marmar.

We will not be denied.

[cantbeserious]

6. Warren For President 2016

eom

[socialist_n_TN]

7. Well populism is at least a start.......

but quite frankly, I've given up on the system EVER representing real workers. On anything.

I do like how this article brings out these left populist ideas and makes a point of them being POPULAR ideas. That's the definition of populism of course, but the ideas that the article makes a point of are ideas that are derided as "fringe" by the "serious ones" even here on DU. Those "serious ones" might be serious, but they're apparently not very democratic.

[L0oniX]

9. Message was hidden by jury decision.

3rd way centrists are the prostitutes of the Dem party to which they are married to. They are adulterers as they sell themselves to corporations after the wedding. Dem candidates speak their marriage vows during their political campaigns and then turn their backs on those vows as they prostitute themselves for that next round of campaign funding ...and future lobby job that awaits them in Vegas where marriage and divorce is quick and easy.

[bvar22]

8. I'm IN!

Obama WON in 2008 running as a Populist.
He was going to:
*End the Wars

*Renegotiate NAFTA

*Make EFCA the Law of the Land"

*most transparent White House ever

*ban lobbyists from the White House

*walk the line with LABOR

*get a "Rescue Mutt", just like himself

*Raise Taxes on the RICH

*Raise the CAP on FICA Deductions

*Give us a Public Option

*Label GMO foods

...practically a reincarnation of Huey Long!
America was, and still IS hungry for those values.

[xchrom]

10. du rec.

[JNelson6563]

11. When I see the comfortable masses

join the effort to make change then I will believe there's an actual movement that might achieve something.

Until then I know all too well that we who struggle to get by (or worse) stand alone.

Julie