Jim Hightower on American populism

Although it was organized into a formal movement for only about 25 years, Populism has had an outsized, long-term, and ongoing impact on our culture, public policies, economic structure and governing systems. Even though its name is rarely used and its history largely hidden, and neither major party will embrace it (much less become it), there are many more people today whose inherent political instincts are populist, rather than conservative or liberal.

Yet the pundits and politicos frame our choices in terms of that narrow con-lib ideological spectrum, ignoring the fact that most of us are neither, or a bit of both. Our nation's true political spectrum is not right to left, but top to bottom. People can locate themselves along this vertical rich-to-poor spread, for this is not a theoretical positioning: It's based on our real-world experience with money and power. This is America's real politics.

Today's workaday majority can plainly see that a privileged few at the top are separating their fortunes as fast as they can from the well-being of the rest of us. We've also seen that after the 2008 economic collapse, both major parties rushed to wipe the fevered brows of the pampered few with our tax dollars and did little about the crash in wages, income, wealth and economic power of the bottom 90 percent. Six years later, Congress continues to ignore the ongoing destruction of the middle class and the unconscionable rise in poverty -- unless you count last year's cuts to food stamp funding and jobless benefits as "doing something."

Our system of representative government has, in a word, collapsed.…

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America's Political Spectrum Is Not Left to Right, It's Top to Bottom—And It has Failed the People

Jim Hightower