Toward a Revival of Left Populism
Toward a Revival of Left Populism
Progressives need to fight and organize for a politics that focuses on class inequality in a consistent and persuasive way.
Perhaps the only positive consequence of the victory of an utterly despicable nominee and his down-ballot faithful is that progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party are groping their way toward a common solution: revive an aggressive populism of the left. Since the Great Recession, as authoritarian populists on the right gained strength across Europe, social democrats posed no coherent alternative and won only, as in the United Kingdom, when their opponents proved to be wretched failures at governing. Both across the Atlantic and in the United States, the left and center-left kept losing native-born voters without a college education who view the current and future economy as a craps game rigged against them.
We now have a chance to win the approval and votes of ordinary Americans who believe their nation is on the wrong track yet are not rushing to get aboard the Trump train, whose policies will largely benefit corporations and are fueled by vitriol and grievance of the most odious kind. But it will take a lot more than messaging about creating an “opportunity economy”—that centerpiece of Kamala Harris’s campaign that did nothing at all to persuade working people to vote for her.
Here are five modest suggestions for how to stoke the populist revival we so urgently need:
First, advocate a small number of policies that are both quite popular and would make the lives of most Americans more secure. These might include universal pre-K, a minimum wage of $18 an hour or higher, strict price controls on pharmaceutical drugs, and the right to an abortion and birth control. The point is to decide on a few vital policies and promote them relentlessly in language that Americans actually speak instead of terms intended to please everybody but inspire no one.
Second, run candidates for office who are wage-earners or small business owners themselves and so can gain the trust of those groups of voters. This year, in a Washington district Trump carried easily, Democratic Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who owns an auto repair shop, expanded her 2022 margin of victory by talking about issues she knew her constituents cared about—which included access to reproductive care and keeping fentanyl from getting across the border. “It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously,” she told the New York Times. In Nebraska, Dan Osborn lost his independent bid for Senate. But the mechanic and former president of his union local ran nearly eight points ahead of Harris in the state on a platform similar to those of Democrats in reliably blue states.
Third, work closely with existing unions and push hard for laws that will make it easier to organize more of them in the private sector. Yes, both Biden and Harris walked on picket lines and expressed support for the PRO Act. But progressive politicians and activists have to make their advocacy of unions central to their rhetoric—and emphasize it all year long. Only workers themselves can organize unions. But there can be no true left populism without institutions that represent and fight for the needs and beliefs of “the people” themselves. This fall, Democrats in York County, Pennsylvania ran their canvassing operation out of a building owned by a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Harris did about as well in that red county as Biden had four years before. Without the in-kind support from that stalwart of the building trades, the party might have had no place from which to gather at all.
Fourth, build Democratic parties that can recruit activists from all parts of their states, with the task of building a durable movement, not merely an organization that comes alive at the start of every campaign. The exemplar of such a party is in purple Wisconsin, where, since 2019, Ben Wikler has led an organization that has offices all over the state and works consistently with advocates for every progressive cause. Democrats there have scored a string of victories in offices from the governor to the state supreme court to the legislature. Harris lost Wisconsin by just 29,000 votes—the smallest margin in the three swing states that rim the Great Lakes. But Badger Democrats flipped ten districts in the assembly and four they had targeted in the state senate. Remarkably, Harris did better in most of Wisconsin’s rural counties than Biden had in 2020.
Fifth, and most controversially, progressives should give up their cherished notion that “people of color” has any electoral meaning. The idea that one can rely on racial solidarity to win the votes of a Black professor at an elite college, a domestic worker from El Salvador, and a computer programmer with family in Mumbai has always been based largely on hope. But the fact that Harris won just 53 percent of Latinos, a group that itself has long been divided by national origin, but 86 percent of Black voters proves that appealing to the “POC” vote is a foolish strategy. Racial and ethnic identities continue to matter, of course. But appeals to them will not produce a majority at the polls.
It will not be easy for Democrats to embrace a populism of the left. Some in the party establishment will argue for bringing back the kind of cautious moderation with which, in the 1990s, Bill Clinton defeated two staunchly neoliberal and quite non-populist nominees of the GOP. But if progressives truly believe that class inequality is at the root of our most severe national problems and widespread discontent, they will have to fight and organize for a politics that focuses on that issue in a consistent and persuasive way. With Trump and his minions in charge of every branch of the federal government, we will soon learn how terrible the alternative will be.
Michael Kazin is an editor emeritus of Dissent. His most recent book is What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party.
