From our April issue: Robert Borosage sees the populist writing on the wall for 2008:
John Edwards is gone, but his populist rhetoric and agenda hold center stage in the Democratic presidential race. The Democratic race has come down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two relatively cautious moderates, tutored by Citi-group's Robert Rubin and his Wall Street-funded Hamilton Project, who have nonetheless both become unlikely populist scourges as the primary season rolled on. ...
No question that Midwest voters are looking for a populist champion. Ohio suffers what Jesse Jackson termed the "trifecta of devastation." It has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. It never enjoyed the housing boom but is nonetheless the center of the collapse. In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development sold homes in Cleveland for less than the price of a latte at Starbucks. The state is disfigured by the long-term poverty of its inner cities and rural Appalachian counties. Even John McCain started talking about creating jobs when he got to Ohio. ...
The fall election will be largely framed around two very different, very populist appeals. McCain will revive the Reagan argument -- government is the problem. He'll pledge to cut spending and taxes, and let you keep more of your money. The incompetence and corruption of government over the last eight years helps make his case. And McCain, the "sheriff" against earmarks, is perfectly situated to make this argument.
Against that, Clinton and Obama argue that the reason things are bad is that government has been handed over to the entrenched "corporate interests." Ironically, Hillary has been running to Obama's populist left through most of this campaign. Her appeal was strengthened by the economic record of her husband, but her populist credibility was also undermined by it, inasmuch as the Clinton presidency championed the corporate trade agenda, cut domestic spending dramatically as a percentage of gross domestic product while running up surpluses, pushed financial deregulation, and failed on health-care and labor-law reform.
Can the Dems ride the spirit of populism all the way to the White House? Read the rest and comment here.
--The Editors
