PREDECESSORS OF SANDERS
AND TRUMP
THE POPULISTS
“American populism has a complicated history, and [Thomas E.
Watson in 1910] embodied its paradoxes. He ended his career, as a U.S.
senator, whipping up white-Protestant enmity against blacks, Catholics, and Jews;
but at the outset, as a leader of the People's Party in the eighteen-nineties,
he urged poor whites and blacks to join together and upend an economic order
dominated by ‘the money power.’ Watson wound up as [Donald] Trump, but he started out
closer to Bernie Sanders, and his hostility to the one per cent of the Gilded Age
would do Sanders proud. Some of Watson's early ideas-rural free delivery of mail,
for example-eventually came to fruition.
Watson in 1910] embodied its paradoxes. He ended his career, as a U.S.
senator, whipping up white-Protestant enmity against blacks, Catholics, and Jews;
but at the outset, as a leader of the People's Party in the eighteen-nineties,
he urged poor whites and blacks to join together and upend an economic order
dominated by ‘the money power.’ Watson wound up as [Donald] Trump, but he started out
closer to Bernie Sanders, and his hostility to the one per cent of the Gilded Age
would do Sanders proud. Some of Watson's early ideas-rural free delivery of mail,
for example-eventually came to fruition.
“That's the volatile nature of
populism: it can ignite reform or reaction, idealism
or scapegoating. It flourishes in periods like Watson's, and like our own, when
large numbers of citizens who see themselves as the backbone of America
(‘producers’ then, ‘the middle class’ now) feel that the game is rigged against them.
They aren't the wretched of the earth - Sanders attracts educated urbanites,
Trump small-town businessmen. They're people with a sense of violated ownership,
holding a vision of an earlier, better America that has come under threat.”
or scapegoating. It flourishes in periods like Watson's, and like our own, when
large numbers of citizens who see themselves as the backbone of America
(‘producers’ then, ‘the middle class’ now) feel that the game is rigged against them.
They aren't the wretched of the earth - Sanders attracts educated urbanites,
Trump small-town businessmen. They're people with a sense of violated ownership,
holding a vision of an earlier, better America that has come under threat.”
Packer, George, “The Populists,” pp: 23 and 24, a Talk of
the Town essay in The New Yorker, September 7, 2015.
