May 02, 2024

Hey Democrats: Find the Party’s Future in Its Populist Past

2 minutes

A farmer friend of mine once bemoaned the fact that the Democrat we’d both supported for president, Bill Clinton, was hugging up Wall Street and stiffing family farmers. “I don’t mind losing when we lose,” my friend said, “but I hate losing when we win.”

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Agreed. Yet, losing in politics is sometimes a prelude to winning, calling not for despair, but a doubling down on principle and organizing. Take the revolutionary presidential platform put forth by the upstart, unabashedly progressive People’s Party in 1892. It was stunning in its little-d democratic boldness, directly challenging corporate power. The populists became the first to support an 8-hour day and minimum wage for labor, women’s suffrage, graduated income taxes, government farm loans to bypass bank monopolies, veterans’ pensions, direct lawmaking by citizen initiatives… etc.

Wall Street and the two-party duopoly soon conspired to crush the People’s Party. But they could not stop its ideas, which grew in popular support and were largely enacted by state and national governments. This democratic reformation occurred because (1) the populists were unabashedly bold, (2) their ideas were solid, benefitting the Common Good, and (3) their political heirs were organized and persistent.

That same rebellious spirit remains at the heart and soul of today’s people’s politics. For example, while 2011’s Occupy Wall Street uprising was autocratically crushed, resurgent labor progressives are now carrying its ideals forward… and winning! Likewise, America’s scrappy democratic soul is being expressed every day by grassroots groups of rural poor people battling corporate polluters, child care workers struggling for decent pay, local people standing up to Silicon Valley arrogance and Wall Street greed… etc.

Americans are on the move against plutocratic and autocratic rule. They need a party to move with them.