Update 4/16/2025: What is beginning to dawn on some MAGA backers is that their new appeal to blue-collar workers can blow back on those who advocate tax breaks to the rich. There are voices from that group of blue-collar workers that do not approve of giving more tax relief to the very rich. Economic populism is a two-edged sword depending on the specific issue. https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/grassley-faces-constituents-as-other-gop-lawmakers-avoid-town-halls-237492805796 The right wings and left wings may have more in common than we may have suspected. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-anti-oligarch-tours-success-should.html With higher prices and inflation soon to be felt by consumers who are having to pinch pennies and live on budgets, economic populism will become much more of an issue soon.
Original post continues:MAGA and the media like to call theirs "populism." It is not my kind of populism. Populists, per Merriam Webster, are members of"a political party claiming to represent the common people". Here's my kind and my fear: Project 2025 and MAGA would destroy whatever cause I have fought in politics as an officeholder and an activist and journalist for 50 years, consumer and environmental protections, public transportation, voting rights, and women's right to control their health. I am mostly an economic populist, not the racial and cultural ones of MAGA. The block of voters within MG/GOP wanting to destroy consumer and environmental protection are not rank-and-file voters, the common people, but business interests..
(Update 7/19/24: This is pure economic populism. However you stand on Biden staying the candidate, however, you feel about Bernie Sanders or think he is too left, included in this interview, this bit from the first part of the interview with Bernie provides the very best substantive case for Democrats that they are the ones who really care about blue-collar white men in this interview, not billionaire-backed JD Vance. It is worth listening and I hope this can be put into print. It represents the best rebuttal to Vance in the VP debates, and the content needs to be Dem messages and TV commercials. https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/-focus-on-biden-s-record-and-what-he-s-trying-to-do-bernie-sanders-urges-support-for-biden-215248965869?
That is what JD Vance is all about, funded and backed by business tech giants who are no way hillbillies or common folk. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/
fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2R_8SArv87IMzn1TxG-vpAfN4T
Here is Vance's RNC acceptance speech and his direct appeal to Rust Belt white workers:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-vance-rnc-2024-67880a3003a69938aebd3ac8a586dc65)
MAGA represents a large block of common people; their leaders know it, but they are a special kind, a tribe of like-minded... MAGA leaders pander to them and feed them with a frenzy of public policy issues,such as anti-immigration from south of the border and fearful disdain for those who do not look like them and do not practice or adhere to evangelical Christianity. It is dark and heavily racist-driven. It is never overtly admitted, but obvious per the visuals, by the uniform complexion of the attendees at rallies, the RNC Convention, and the candidates adhering to the GOP. Those who once objected to this approach are now either in exile or echoing racism masked in the immigration fear of mongering and a willingness to have a strong man who personifies their ideals become their president. The lies told by the immigrant fear hypers at the RNC convention on July 16, 2024, are truly "ominous, "in the words of ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fact-focus-ominous-claims-illegal-immigration-made-republican-112021706
Fear of "others" is a form of racism It is powerful food for the fearful gullible and red meat for the demagogues. Fear offsets and diverts attention from any other messages delivered by opponents. That includes substituting a dictatorship for democracy by promoting Trump. Democracy is the purest form of populist expression when it is free and fair, not access suppressed, not controlled by one party, or declared rigged 4 months in advance of the election if Trump does not win. Violence is being threatened, and plans for schemes to use fake electors, refusals to certify results, a jammed judicial processes, a Trump dominated Supreme Court, among them. " Fair and free "in Trumpworld are only if Trump wins, it appears. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/us/politics/republican-election-campaign-2024.html https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-alludes-potential-violence-surrounding-2024-election-depends-
This is what MAGA/GOP plan to do, but" fear of others" has taken over, so many are now willing to ditch it, and some even to threaten violence to do so. Lies have to be told to make it such an effective pitch becauise the truth would weaken the fear factor.. Fear of others fed the rise of dictators. Fear of Jews fueled Hitler; fear of Syrian immigrants fueled dictator Orban of Hungary. Fear of terrorists fueled Putin. Now, from MAGA/GOP, fear of others and hoards of brown people at the southern border is their most powerful message and reason to vote for Trump.
There is another kind of populism that has been lost in the media and rhetoric, but it represents an even larger group of the population, even if it is not called that in today's political discourse. It is the kind once demanded by common people that set the tone ..until 2016.. in the movement of FDR, the Great Society,60's, 70's, and 80 '80s that the MAGA GOP wants to eliminate. MAGA calls it the "administrative state", the evil they want to replace by their version of a Trump-loyal bureaucracy that rules and makes judgment calls in conformance with their ideology. https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-conservatives-trump-heritage-857eb794e505f1c6710eb03fd5b58981The old populism MAGA us rejecting.is one that objects to enormous income disparity, intolerance of racial and religious diversity, and a government that looks after their day-to-day needs and protects the weaker from the unfairness of those with greater economic and political power. Old-style populism speaks of pragmatism and the belief that a government should be there to serve those with policies that the private sector has failed to address or runs counter to certain self-interests. It reflects America as it now is, not as another group wants it to be, and plans to take away from the rest those protections from being mistreated. That is the great divide we are facing. The populism of old is being replaced by the populism of the MAGA. It is that brand of old-style populism Biden and his cohorts represent. The loss of civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights, consumer protections, environmental protections, fair tax codes, voting rights, and access to health care is real if MAGA wins out. These rights and fairness have been taken for granted for over 50 years, and I fear they will be lost before the beneficiaries even realize they are gone.
Signs waived by MAGA convention goers:" Stop inflation "and " lower grocery prices" fail to recognize Biden has led the world in recovery from COVID, but no president, even Trump, can dictate grocery prices. Gas at the pump prices are set by foreign cartels. Yet all are coming down; inflation has slowed so much that the Fed is predicted to lower interest rates in September. We had no recession that was predicted last year, but 16 Nobel laureate economists say Trump's tariff plans and labor shortages would cause both inflation and a serious recession. The protections in danger by MAGA have to do with the safety of food and drugs, the price of prescription drugs, consumer product safety, and protections from consumer gouging practices and deceptions in financial institutions. https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/conversations-with-trumpster-claiming.html
Project 2025 and Trump's rhetoric and the people he has and now does surround himself with to subvert and take away the rights and gains. Trump will try to distance himself from the most unpopular extremist positions, manifestos, and roadmaps to consolidate power in the executive branch, giving him virtual dictatorial powers. The plans oiutined in Project 2025 to replace the admnistate with the spoils system of those pledging loyal to Trump.. This affects more than just certain public policy issues cited in their document. Much is in black and white in the Project 2025 publication, written and devised by former Whtie House staffers. The Supreme Court has given Trump some new gifts to seize power: presidential immunity from criminal prosecution and the Chevron decision, virtually crippling administrative law powers. Others are supportive or have even more extreme views on public policy issues his cohorts hold. His narcissistic drive for power will make it hard for him to deny some of the issues involved since it is so much a part of the MAGA/GOP he has created and so much of his documented pronouncements in any media. The only answer is to hold Trump's feet to the fire on his plan to institute a spoils system up ad down the federal government and at the same time, bring attention to specific policy issues to call him call him out on the harm he plans to do to the bulk of the population.
I have been and still am an admitted old-fashioned populist since I first became active in politics at the beginning of the 1960s. Here is how I recently expressed it in greater detail in this blog and my fear for the future of democracy, my form of populism.
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-trump-court-has-just-given-us.html
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/06/buyer-beware-trump-supreme-court-just.html
https://time.com/6550686/trump-autocracy-dictator-polling/
On fear of violence: https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-alludes-potential-violence-surrounding-2024-election-depends-
On immigration:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/jul/17/fact-checking-rnc-day-2-gop-focuses-on-biden-and-h/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fact-focus-ominous-claims-illegal-immigration-made-republican-112021706
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2024-07-17/fact-focus-a-look-at-ominous-claims-around-illegal-immigration-made-at-
On consumer and environmental protections.
How Project 2025 plans to dismantle the administrative state; https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-conservatives-trump-heritage-857eb794e505f1c6710eb03fd5b58981
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/how-project-2025-plans-to-destroy.html The part of the administrative state Project 2025 contains a plan to dismantle is the government mechanism which protects consumers and the environment from unfair, dangerous, fraudulent practices in whatever they buy, the air they breathe, the truth of the advertising they see and hear, the water they drink, and the financial credit they use, and even access to abortion and birth control..
When Must You Comply?
Practical Steps for You
