Lloyd's book inspired a generation of "trust busting" reformers who believed that the very size of the corporate giants constituted a threat to the common good. In 1894, the same year he ran as a Populist candidate for Congress, Lloyd published Wealth against Commonwealth, a deeply researched study of how the wealth of Standard Oil and other giant corporations undermined democratic government. Born in New York City and educated at Columbia University, Lloyd became a journalist dedicated to the ethics of social justice. Henry Demarest Lloyd was such an activist and the similarities between Lloyd and Sanders are striking. Some of these activists called themselves "democratic socialists" much in the same way that Bernie Sanders does today. The party also attracted a spectrum of middle class activists, from Frances Willard to Clarence Darrow, involved in women's rights, currency and tax reform, and clean government. Grain and cotton farmers, coal miners, and railroad workers made up its biggest constituencies. In drawing a parallel between Sanders and the Populists it should be kept in mind that the People's party represented a coalition. And he has even endorsed a Populist classic: turning post offices into banks to make inexpensive and equitable financial services available to those with too little cash to be considered worthy customers by the commercial banks. The Populists pushed all these issues onto the political agenda more than a century ago-Sanders currently has them at the center of his campaign. They wanted more public colleges and universities and to have them better serve the needs of working people. They advocated for government investment and currency expansion to stimulate the economy, create jobs, build infrastructure, and provide relief to debtors. They demanded public control and regulation of banking, railroads, and other key industries. They pushed for a progressive income tax to make the wealthy shoulder more of the tax burden. The Populists proposed electoral reforms to squeeze corruption out of the system and to make government more transparent. The resulting injustice meant the destruction of the livelihoods of working people and a rendering of society into a nation of "tramps and millionaires." As for solutions, much of the Sanders' campaign webpage reads from the Populist playbook. The Populists believed that corporations held undue influence over elections, the halls of government, and the courts. Like Sanders, the Populists called for a political revolution-that is, using the electoral process to create a more humane and equitable society. This suggests that to understand today's headlines about a populist Trump we need a different historical measure and to examine how some contemporary political commentators have separated the term populist from its origins. By the same historical measure, Donald Trump, with his gold-plated jets and mansions, looks very much like the type of plutocrat the Populists held responsible for the injustices and inequities of their time. By the measure of this historical legacy, Bernie Sanders looks very much like a populist for the "Second Gilded Age," both in his diagnosis of and solutions to society's ills. In the early 1890s the People's party-whose members were known by the quirky nickname Populists, or just Pops-represented a powerful movement against corporate power that demanded solutions to the Gilded Age crisis of inequality. A good starting point to answer this question would be to trace back to the historical origins of the term. Pairing Sanders and Trump indicates just how flexible the term populist has become and poses the question as to whether populist has any useful meaning and if so, what it might be. Photo by Jamelle Bouie under a Creative Commons 2.0 license. Whether it is policy, style, or temperament, these two candidates make for strange peas in a pod. Congress, and Donald Trump is a reality TV show host and conservative real estate tycoon whose temperamental political compass points towards animosity against immigrants and women. Bernie Sanders is one of the longest serving and consistently progressive politicians in the U.S. His counterpart at the New Yorker analyzes the Sanders and Trump campaigns under the simple heading "The Populists." These headlines defy ordinary political sense given just how different these two candidates are from each other. A reporter at the Los Angeles Times writes on "the populist sentiment fueling both the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns." A pundit at the National Review asks if Sanders and Trump are "two populist peas in a pod?" and answers in the affirmative. The headlines tell us that the political campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have opened a new chapter of populist politics. If Trump and Sanders Are Both Populists, What Does Populist Mean? Charles Postel
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