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WEDNESDAY HOT READ: THE COMING POPULIST BACKLASHBy Charlie Sykes
Against the Democrats. Michael Lind wonders whether the Democrats have any idea what is building out here in fly-over country.
First they came for the bankers. Then they came for the CEOs. Then they came for the liberals. That might be the epitaph of the Democratic Party, if Democrats cannot learn to surf the tsunami of populism created by the economic earthquake. If the Obama administration doesn’t start to deal with the populist wave headed for Washington, Republicans will tap a reservoir of resentment that could destroy his presidency. ... As more Americans lose their jobs and their homes, as more businesses crater and banks topple, popular anger is rising like a wall of water over a suddenly quiet beachfront resort. You’d think that the Democrats in Washington would be aware of the danger. After all, the massive expansion of Great Society spending in the 1960s, followed by the stagflation of the 1970s, allowed the marginal conservative movement to tap populist anger and dominate American politics for a generation. Substitute stimulus for Great Society and years of possible “stag-deflation” for stagflation, and you have a scenario in which the Obama’s overwhelming majority could collapse as quickly as LBJ’s.
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