Should-Read: I really, really resent people calling this "populism". There were two populist moments—one in late nineteenth-century America, focused on policies to make the forgotten man of America better off via railroad regulation, unions, effective antitrust, and monetary expansion via the free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16-to-1. The second was post-World War II Latin America and its push for a rapid wage increase high-pressure economy stabilized via financial repression. You can argue as to whether the policies advocated would have made the economy better or worse off—I say "both" and "it depends". But the movement had nothing in common with the ethnic-animosity anti-rootless cosmopolite "Herrenvolk"-affirming plutocratic looting spree now going on in America, or, indeed, with analogous movements in Europe (where not even the plutocrats but rather a lumpenoverclass_ of politically well-connected grifters stand to benefit. Call it fascism. It was never populism. And Catherine Rampell has no excuse for supposing it ever was: Catherine Rampell: Populism died on Saturday: "In the end, only those on the populist right successfully took over a major political party, and later the country...
...But what did they win, really? Did they get the great economic de-rigging they demanded? A fair shake for good, wholesome folk like themselves? The draining, at last, of the swamp? No. Instead, a week ago, the Trump administration began dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a post-financial crisis creation designed specifically to protect the little guy from scam artists and swamp creatures. And then, in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Senate passed the most plutocratic, regressive, system-rigging piece of tax legislation in decades. A bill that allows multimillionaires to pass on their estates tax-free. That offers one special break to owners of private jets and another to those who send their kids to private school.... Republicans know how unpopular it is, and they just don’t care. Instead, they expect the populist right to be satisfied with some race-baiting tweets. Some mean-spirited, occasionally unconstitutional immigration policies. The satisfaction of having a president who makes liberals angry. Instead of bread, the populists are told to be grateful for their circuses...
