Author: Jim

For Democrats who argue that adoption of economic populism message is the best way to counter Trump, Guy Molyneux, a partner in Garin’s polling firm, warns in his American Prospect essay, “A Tale of Two Populisms,” that voters drawn to Trump are anti-government, deeply wary of a pro-government Democratic Party.

White working-class voters’ negative view of government spending undermines their potential support for many progressive economic policies. While they want something done about jobs, wages, education, and health care, they are also fiscally conservative and deeply skeptical of government’s ability to make positive change. So political populism not only differs from economic populism, but also serves as a powerful barrier to it.

For all the harm he has done, continues to do and proposes to do, Trump has successfully forced Democrats to begin to examine the party’s neglected liabilities, the widespread resentment of its elites and the frail loyalty of its supporters.

In both Australia and the United States we have politicians and commentators whose political posturing rests on their unwavering focus on terrorism but who pay little attention to, and even attack, those who know the most about it. They support policies that have no sound security justification and then excoriate those who point that out. They cheer on every advance of the security state but then suddenly scorch those who run it, simply because the agencies reject the latest populist orthodoxy.