About 20 years before there was a Progressive Party in the U.S. -- the Populist Party was all the rage.
An Overview of Populism
by Charles Postel, San Francisco State University
In the early 1890s, a coalition of farmers, laborers, and middle class activists founded an independent political party named the People's Party, also known as the Populist Party. This party was the product of a broad social movement that emerged in response to wrenching changes in the American economy and society. In the decades after the Civil War, the telegraph and telephone meant that information that had taken weeks or months to travel across continents and oceans now traveled at the speed of electric current. The telecommunications revolution made the world a much smaller place (today we call it globalization). It also made possible large-scale business organization in the form of railroad corporations and other giant and centralized enterprises. Corporate power grew exponentially, allowing corporate executives to amass great fortunes, while hard times pressed on most everyone else. Americans had never experienced such a divide between rich and poor.
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The Populist movement also posed one of the biggest challenges to corporate power ever witnessed in the United States. In protest of high freight charges and usurious mortgage rates the movement pressed for government regulation or ownership of railroads and banks. [...] To finance essential public functions they demanded the enactment of a progressive income tax on the wealthiest Americans. To rid government of the undue influence of corporate lobbyists the Populists demanded the direct election of senators, as well as the initiative and referendum, and other experiments in direct democracy.
The rise of Populism horrified many upper and middle class Americans. The corporate elite believed that their laissez-faire ideal of unregulated capitalism was the only model suitable for modern development. In the eyes of the well to do and well educated, Populism represented an assault by primitive "hayseeds" and ignorant "clodhoppers" that put modern civilization in peril. Ever since, such a perspective has influenced how Populism has been understood and where it has been situated in the narrative of American history.
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Populism -- wikipedia.org
Populism is a political doctrine that appeals to the interests and conceptions (such as hopes and fears) of the general people, especially contrasting those interests with the interests of the elite.[1]
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Nonetheless, in recent years academic scholars have produced definitions of populism which enable populist identification and comparison. Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell define populism as an ideology that "pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who were together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice".[5]
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Inequality
Populism in Latin American countries has both an economic and an ideological edge. Populism in Latin America has mostly addressed the problem, not of capitalist economic development as such but its inclusiveness,[63] in the backdrop of highly unequal societies in which people are divided between a relative few wealthy groups and masses of poor, even in the case of societies such as Argentina, where strong and educated middle classes are a significant segment of the population.[64] Therefore the key role of the State in Latin American populism, as an institution, is to mediate between traditional elites and the "people" in general.[65] In appealing to the masses of poor people prior to gaining power, populists may promise widely-demanded food, housing, employment, basic social services, and income redistribution. Once in political power, they may not always be financially or politically able to fulfill all these promises. However, they are very often successful in providing many broad and basic services.[66][67]
Populism, since it is about elevating people, knows no boundaries. It is no respecter of wealth. Populism is popular wherever it is given an chance to level the economic playing field.
Unfortunately for the American Populism movement at the turn of the last century, its best ideas were quietly being co-opted and claimed, by the Democratic Party of the day ...
People's Party (United States) -- wikipedia.org
The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party on the left in the United States. It was established in 1891 during the Populist movement. It was most important in 1892-96, and then rapidly faded away. Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South (especially North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas) and hard-pressed wheat farmers in the plains states (especially Kansas and Nebraska), it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, cities, railroads, gold, and elites generally. It sometimes formed coalitions with labor unions in the North and with the Republican Party in the South. Its strongest election came in 1894. In 1896 the Populists endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan, but added their own vice presidential nominee. They lost their distinctive identity and faded away. The terms "populist" and "populism" are commonly used In the 21st century for anti-elitist appeals in opposition to established interests and mainstream parties, and may refer to the left or right.
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Presidential election of 1896
By 1896, the Democratic Party took up many of the People's Party's causes at the national level, and the party began to fade from national prominence. In that year's presidential election, the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan, who focused (as Populists rarely did) on the free silver issue as a solution to the economic depression and the maldistribution of power. One of the great orators of the day, Bryan generated enormous excitement among Democrats with his "Cross of Gold" speech, and appeared in the summer of 1896 to have a good chance of winning the election, if the Populists voted for him. [...]
In 1896, the 36-year old William Jennings Bryan was the chosen candidate resulting from the fusion of the Democrats and the People's Party.
Cross of Gold speech -- wikipedia.org
The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan, a former United States Representative from Nebraska, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896. [...] Bryan's address helped catapult him to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination; it is considered one of the greatest political speeches in American history.
[...] Although his statements nominally responded to a point made by Russell, Bryan had thought of the argument the previous evening, and had not used it in earlier speeches. He always regarded it as the best point he made during the speech, and only the ending caused more reaction from his listeners:
We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.[66][70]
Through this passage, Bryan maintained the contrast between the common man and the city-dwelling elite. It was clear to listeners as he worked his way through the comparisons that he would refer to the farmer, and when he did, the hall exploded with sound. His sympathetic comparison contrasted the hardworking farmer with the city businessman, whom Bryan cast as a gambler. The galleries were filled with white as spectators waved handkerchiefs, and it was several minutes before he could continue.[71]
Although the Democratic-Populist fusion Candidate went on to lose
the 1896 Election, to Republican William McKinley by an usual --
by today's standards -- Electoral Map configuration:
it is a shame that Populists, and the timeless values that they stand for, went the way of those
... primitive "hayseeds" and ignorant "clodhoppers" that put modern civilization in peril.
Never to be taken seriously again ... by the "Corporate Elites" whose
businessman status, they still to this day, maintain is beyond
(our) reproach.
Afterall they should know ... who will be credibly "popular" today -- and which 'seedy' candidates they have pre-emptively deemed -- just won't. That's what the status quo is for -- to save the nation from us commoners, and anyone brave enough, to dare speak for us.