Vox Populism

I don’t know if Sarah Palin is going to burn up like the proverbial pan flash or carry McBush to the White House, but I do know how the Democrats can challenge her splashy appeal. It’s called populism, only it’s not the reactionary, know-nothing, fundamentalist, cowboy kind Palin’s peddling. I also know that the Democrats are deathly afraid of populism -- what the Republicans like to call “class war” as they wage it so successful for their masters -- because the Democrats are just as in hock to a tiny masterly elite. Not the same people, of course, but the same class of people. Back when Andy Jackson was around, it was called the Money Power. Later the Slave Power. More than just the names change, of course, but the principal remains. When the strong weight of the state is captured by elite interests, the ruling oligarchies crush us. But when the strong weight of the state represents the great majority of us, we have a much more equitable economic system, and a much more equitable democratic one, as well.

The Democrats have the titans of the financial services industry, currently imploding the economy, and the tech business -- all swells who think they are broad-mined -- in their camp, while the Republicans have the old extractive industries, old money, and the giant shopkeepers. Biden, after all, is a long-time water-carrier for the usurious bankers who camp out in Delaware to take advantage of its harlot-like incorporation laws. Like New York’s Chuck Schumer, who represents the financial services industry so well, these tools give us scraps of social liberalism wrapped around predatory capitalism and call it “progressive.” And of course, Obama’s change rhetoric, so shameless poached by McBush, is not about fundamental change to the economic structure of the land. Until it is, the yahoos are going to run to Palin’s bogus cultural noise and eat the red meat of hate and fear, regardless of how detrimental it is to their own interests, (jobs, pocketbooks, mortgage payments, public sphere, and social/civic services).