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Last week, Hightower and I sat down for a couple beers with author Cory Haala, who’s just released When Democrats Won the Heartland and who is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. Cory has brilliantly documented how, as the national Democratic Party moved towards corporate cash in the 1980s, maverick politicians throughout the Midwest and Plains states practiced good ol’ fashioned populism—and won. Not only did they win, but they also executed on the policies that they had championed while campaigning. Imagine that!

With Hightower being part of the coalition of Texas populists who took the 1980s by storm, and who traveled to the northern states Cory covers to campaign, speechify and rally the grassroots, he’s featured prominently throughout the book. My favorite Hightower highlight comes right in the introduction:

Rather than give a handout, they believed the role of government was to give a hand up. Put more bluntly by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower: “If we’d have been liberals,” discussing struggling watermelon growers in Texas, “we’d have retrained them to do something else. As populists, we changed the market structure that was f***ing them over. That’s the difference.”

Paid subscribers can watch the whole video above, and also read an excerpt of Cory’s book below. Enjoy!