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by PaulDavisThe1st 1179 days ago
The Pew study is interesting, but I feel that it's whole approach manages to elide the more important question of what specific policies a majority of the population would support. It is clear (in general, and in the Pew report) that there are many policies that both the "progressive left" and "conservative right" will never agree on. But it is less clear what might be the support for policies like e.g. government industrial policy involving investment in US-based businesses which can be spun either way but are generally "populist".

Alas, we appear unlikely to find out, since no presidential/senate candidate is going to do anything truly populist with economic policy for fear of pissing off the big donors.
1 comments
esja 1179 days ago
Yes, that’s the big unknown. It’s hard for any sort of anti-establishment populist to emerge. Trump is an example of this: he basically ran against both parties, was rendered ineffective, and they haven’t stopped trying to bury him. Ross Perot, Ron Paul & Bernie Sanders covered similar ground (albeit from different angles) and hit the same wall.
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PaulDavisThe1st 1179 days ago
According to Pew, the wall they ran into is that their policies are not popular enough.

But anyway, I do not consider Trump as having been rendered ineffective, and he certainly isn't buried.

More centrally, there's no obligation of those with the (literal or metaphorical) printing presses to spread the good word Our Favorite Populist of the moment. In the USA, we ceded control of "the press" to the private sector, without any expectation that they would ever act against the interests of their owners. There's no reason why any multi-(m|b)illion corporation is ever going to champion Bernie Sander's policies. On the other hand, Trump's policies (from day one) were just fine for the largest news organization on the planet, precisely because they were never threatening to the status quo.

If people actually want to hear populist policies, they're going to have to pay attention to something other than corporate owned media, regardless of its nominal political orientation.

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