With three years remaining in the presidency of Barack Obama, the party he has led since mesmerizing members with his 2008 campaign has begun debating a post-Obama future. Though more united than Republicans, Democrats nevertheless face simmering tensions between the establishment and a newly energized populist wing, led by the […] Read more »
The Return of Liberal Populism in America and Britain
During the 1990s, Democrats in the United States and the Labor Party in the United Kingdom pursued parallel transformations. Behind the leadership of President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair, each party recast its traditional liberalism into a “Third Way” centrism that balanced government activism with reform and tilted its […] Read more »
Plutocrats vs. Populists
… Plutocratic politics have much to recommend them. They are pure, smart and focused. But at a time when society as a whole is riven by an ever widening economic chasm, policy delivered from on high can get you only so far. Voters on both the right and the left […] Read more »
Bill de Blasio and the New Urban Populism
In an era of Clintonesque caution, when Democrats typically mute any expression of their leftward leanings, Bill de Blasio, who will almost certainly be elected mayor of New York City two weeks from now, does not concede an inch to the right. … Does the advent of a new era […] Read more »
The New Old Thing: Jeffersonian populism returns
In conservative circles of late there has been an ongoing conversation about a (seemingly) new approach to governance, “libertarian populism.” Timothy P. Carney, a senior columnist for the Washington Examiner, argues that “conservatives need to turn to the working class as the swing population that can deliver elections,” and to […] Read more »