We modern Democrats suck at populism because we are not racist (A good thing)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

We modern Democrats suck at populism because to be effective populism usually requires a racist/nativist component.

It is us, the populace, versus them. To catch fire the "them" has to trade on our deep evolutionary sense of "us and them" which is tribal.

The metaphor of the tribe of 300,000 Americans versus the tribe of largely unseen rich power-brokers just doesn't have that reptile-brain zing. The classic formulation would be opposition to a conspiracy involving the rich folk on the hill and their agents, who happen to whichever of your neighbors you don't get like to mix with.

This is something I wrote about often when Edwards was still in the primaries. His populism never caught hold because it didn't have a racist component. (Quite obvously I am not suggest it should have!) Old-school white southern populism traded on a conceptual alliance of southern blacks and rich, educated outsiders... elites, New York Jews, the classic "outside agitator."

(In the famous Mary Phagin case a Jewish professional from outside the south was railroaded for a murder comitted by a southern black man. I've always felt that summed up something about the bewildering complexity of the regional/racist dynamic.)

Lou Dobbs reviles both corporations and brown-skinned people who want your job. That's a potent populist mix.

Hitler was a populist demagogue with a potent mix of enemies-of-the-people... Jews were cast as both financiers AND communists. They lived among the 'authentic' Germans but took their orders from Moscow. Outside influence, but internal manifestation.

Though Marxism envisions class distinctions overwhelming ethnicity and nationalism, in practice most communist experiments end up manipulating ethnic and regional animus and creating enemies within... suspicious neighbors. Stalins purges of wealthy (sic!) peasants and Mao's cultural revolution were dynamite examples of finding that the enemy was someone close enough to you that you could feel the tribal drum-beat, rather than an abstract abhorrence of New York financiers.

All of the preceding is to answer this question:

Why is the ultra-right wing so much better at channeling populist rage than we, the actual party of the populi, can manage?

There are effective modes of politics that are not open to us because we are dedicated to equality and tolerance. And that's a good thing in the long-run! But it helps explain why the Tea-baggers have so much more enthusiasm.

[JVS]

1. The Bolsheviks were able to do populism without racism/nativism

But then again, they didn't feel a need to kiss rich people's asses

[OHdem10]

2. Populism does not mean racist. Is the truth we cannot be populist

because we are intellectual snobs who cannot get our
clothes soiled mixing with those low class people.

Populist simply means working in the interest of the people.
Usually means looking out for the little guy. Our Party
under DLC has made Populism a bad thing. It can be a
good thing because you organize ordinary people in such
a way to look out for their own interests. Unionism
is a form of populism. Marxism was a form of populism.

Our party frowns on Populism in hopes of keeping activists
under their control.

Yes Populism can be used for wrong purposes. Populism
and Liberalism go hand in hand. Do not worry. DLC Rules.