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Thomas kavanaugh's avatar

There is a lot of room for a populist movement in the US. It is in the ever increasing income gap and is fueled by foreign and domestic propaganda. It is also fueled by an ineffective democracy hamstrung by special interests and dependent on campaign donations. And as you said a population who is distracted by what is said and not what is done.

I would posit that there is two types of populism. There is authoritarian populism that you describe and there is another kind represented by people like the Roosevelt's Ted and Franklin and maybe a few others not based on resentment but on a recognition by an elite that the elites are only elite by luck and not any thing they did to deserve it.

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Sharon McMahon's avatar

Fascinating! It’s interesting, though, that TR advocated greatly expanding the power of the federal government on behalf of the little guy. What he hated were corrupt businesses, not the democratic institutions.

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Jonathon Wurth's avatar

Interesting thoughts here. Would TR and FDR be considered populists? I hadn't thought about it that way before. They certainly appealed to the "common man."

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Sharon McMahon's avatar

I don't think they fit a traditional definition of populist, because they were about institution building, but they definitely had some populist rhetoric that appealed to the average American in ways that people like Woodrow Wilson could never capture.

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Jonathon Wurth's avatar

Aha, that makes sense.

I remember driving with my late father-in-law a few years back in eastern Colorado as he pointed out the infrastructure that was built by the Works Progress Administration. Programs like the WPA seemed to both expand the reach of the federal government while appealing to the working man.

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