They’re All Populists

October 15, 2019 Meyerson on TAP They’re All Populists, and Centrists Don’t Like ’Em. The sloppiest word in American journalism today is “populist.” In the hands of most of my journalist brothers and sisters, most especially the centrists among them, it has become both a genteel way to describe Trumpian racists and a way to denigrate the policies, derived from scholarly studies, of such non-centrists as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  Consider, if you will, the op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post by columnist David Von Drehle, on whom, some years ago, I bestowed a Hillman Prize for his terrific book on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Von Drehle begins by noting the cancerous growth of economic inequality, which has led, he notes with dismay, to the rise of populism across “the political spectrum.” But, he continues, “simple prescriptions prove inadequate to a complex world. We can shut out the immigrants—or, if you prefer, we can tax the billionaires.” If you wonder how taxing billionaires has become the moral or intellectual equivalent of nativist cruelty, the answer is that Von Drehle’s real target in his column is Elizabeth Warren, who, he writes, “despite her plethora of plans, offers a strikingly simplistic explanation of the complex forces afoot.” As evidence of Warren’s apparent demagogy, he cites something she said in an interview with Ezra Klein: “Washington works for the wealthy and the well-connected. It totally is corruption.” From which witches’ brew did Warren dredge this piece of shameless populism? Perhaps it was the 2014 study by political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of 1,779 policy decisions over a 20-year period, published by Cambridge University Press. The authors concluded that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” Crackpot conspiracy theories on social media; exhaustive social-science research on federal-government policy outcomes—all the same populist garbage, apparently, according to the Von Drehle calculus. Whatever it takes to attack Elizabeth Warren—and still, she persists! ~ HAROLD MEYERSON Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter