GOP Aims to Outflank Dems on Economic Populism

Posted by David Sirota, Open Left at 7:39 AM on February 17, 2009.

I've sparred at times with New America think-tanker Michael Lind, but that doesn't mean we don't agree often. His article today in the Daily Beast is an example of such agreement, as I think he really nails the political danger of this moment for Democrats:

First they came for the bankers. Then they came for the CEOs. Then they came for the liberals. That might be the epitaph of the Democratic Party, if Democrats cannot learn to surf the tsunami of populism created by the economic earthquake...

The Obama administration has seemed more concerned with reassuring Wall Street that it will be protected against Main Street hotheads than in disciplining Wall Street on behalf of Main Street Americans who have lost jobs, homes, and savings. First Obama appointed an economic team dominated by Robert Rubin proteges, like Timothy Geithner, who were considered safe by the Street. Then Geithner put forth a plan which many economists warn might force the public to pay too much for toxic assets held by the banks...

Given the opportunity, Republicans can once again tap a reservoir of resentment, some of it justified. For a generation, the white-collar liberals who now dominate the Democratic Party have shown a remarkable ability to dress up their own economic interests in the rhetoric of globalization and anti-racism while attacking the motives and assaulting the characters of Americans who are far less wealthy and privileged.

I think Lind uses a few too many tired cliches to make blanket characterizations of "liberals," but I also think he's onto something.

In the 2008 Republican primary, we saw the rise of the economic populist wing of the GOP through Mike Huckabee. This faction has started making waves in Congress, too - many Republicans voted against the bank bailout, and there were at a few Republican-backed amendments aimed at forcing stimulus money to be spent on specific projects in the United States, and not on job outsourcing (Sanders-Grassley was one of them). And now, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham is endorsing bank nationalization.

In other words, if the Democrats don't embrace their populist wing, they will find the Republicans trying to outflank them on some hot-button economic issues like trade, outsourcing, and economic patriotism.

Lind concludes by saying a savior for Democrats will be the presence "of populist liberals, many of whom defeated incumbent Republicans in 2006, including Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Virginia Senator Jim Webb." Democrats "owe their majorities in both houses of Congress in part to politicians like these," Lind says, "whose criticism of US trade policies alarms the Rubinesque neoliberals." I obviously agree - and in the coming battles over trade, union rights and health care, the success or failure of this populist wing will likely be the success or failure of the Democratic Party as a whole.

Tagged as: congress, democrats, republicans, house, populism, senate, economic recovery