The Logic of Populism: The Left Wing
Since I analyzed the debt-ceiling crisis from the perspective of right-wing populism in May a group of House Republicans who are farthest to the right called “The 20” have seemingly determined that they will block any further bi-partisan deals Speaker McCarthy might hope to cut with Democrats. They are holding up passage of the defense appropriations bill over funding for abortion access, support for trans personnel, and diversity, equity, and inclusion training. They are also prepping for a potential government shutdown in October, if a federal budget can’t be passed. Because the “20” and their ideologically related Freedom Caucus colleagues want deep budget cuts that the Senate would never approve, a shutdown is a distinct possibility.
That’s contemporary populism on the right. Blow things up, if we can’t get our way! I now want to look at left-wing populism in contrast. In May I explained the way that all populisms are cross-class in character. I also argued that the issue of race is central to both right and left-wing populisms in America. Following Robert Kazan, I view right populism as triadic. It sees “the people” as the white working and middle classes. The enemy becomes on the one hand “economic and cultural elites and big government,” and on the other hand “people of color and the big government protection of them.”[1]
In May I said that left populism is dyadic. It seeks to lift up common people of the middle and working classes against economic elites and big government, regardless of race or ethnicity. However, let me now complicate the left populist dyad. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) trade unions of the 1930s were cases of dyadic populism. But in their movement the dyad was the working classes of all races arrayed against economic elites and government. Thus, the CIO was not so much cross-class as it was cross racial in bringing Black, Brown and White workers together during the depths of the Great Depression.
In the 1950s and 60s the Civil Rights Movement though predominantly Black, rallied elements of all races and classes, that time, against a government and elites who protected White supremacy.
In the 1980s the Reverend Jesse Jackson ran for president twice under the banner of the Rainbow
Coalition. That concept coalesced the labor movement with all of the new social movements from the 1960s (racial, women’s, LGBTQ, environmental). It also invited all “progressive people, historically locked out of the mainstream of American politics” under its umbrella.[2] The Jackson campaign was multiracial, multi-gendered and cross-class. The first presidential campaign to consciously be built on such a basis.
Launched from the intellectual framework underpinning King’s Poor People’s Campaign in 1968, Jackson’s campaign and the Rainbow Coalition Movement melded race to class by advancing economic justice in a multiracial society. In calling for a fundamental restructuring of American society along race and class lines simultaneously the Rainbow Coalition represented an unprecedented populist thrust from the left.
Bernie Sanders channeled the energy of the “99%” from the Occupy Movement of 2011 into his presidential campaigns of 2016 and 2020. A product of the New Left of the 1960s, he was active in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. After moving to Vermont, he became a committed democratic socialist. He carried that worldview into his career in electoral politics as mayor of Burington, US congressman, and US senator.
Officially listed as an independent, Sanders is the only avowed socialist in the Senate. He caucuses and gets his committee assignments with Democratics. Sanders founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus in 1991. At that time it had six members. As of this year the Caucus has 102 members, all of whom are in the House of Representatives except for Senator Sanders.
Energized by the slogan “We are the 99%,” The Occupy Movement held a classical left populist “class view” of the impacts of the Recession on everyday people. The movement was cross-class, but it animated middle and working-class people of all races. That re-emergent populist left wanted Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016, but she preferred to keep her focus on progressive economic reforms in the Senate. The movement then approached Bernie Sanders, and after months of ruminating he declared his candidacy in April of 2015.
The debates between Clinton and Sanders offered Americans serious exchanges over policy which clearly distinguished the mainstream from populist left. They also illustrated that Sanders, though branded as a populist, had well-considered policy proposals on economic reform, but also issues like border policy and policing reform. He won 22 state primaries and caucuses, 43% of the vote and 46% of the pledged delegates to the Democratic Convention. He endorsed Clinton in the fall campaign though his support for her was lukewarm at best.
Sanders stumbled over the issue of race on the campaign trail. After being shouted from the stage by Black Lives Matter activists in Seattle in the summer of 2015, he was forced to make racial issues more central in his campaign. He belatedly hired more POC on his campaign staff. The strength of Sanders’ message energized numerous progressives to run for office in 2018 and many of them won as the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives.
When Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020, and Democrats held onto the House and gained control of the Senate. The 117th Congress (2021-23) offers a great example of the way that populists can move the policy dial to the left with the input of mainstream liberals. Biden rolled out a Build Back Better plan that would be the largest public investment package since Roosevelt’s New Deal. The plan contained three parts: Covid 19 relief, an infrastructure bill and a package of social policies called the American Families Plan. The Covid and infrastructure bills passed in 2021 with bipartisan support. The American Families Plan, however, reshaped into the “Build Back Better Act,” passed in the House, but was tabled in the Senate. Moderate Democrat Joe Manchin(West Virginia) expressed reservations, which would’ve caused its failure in a Senate split 50-50.
The Build Back Better Act aimed to expand public investment toward climate change and across the economy, support affordable health care, and protect immigrants from deportation, while providing work permits for many of them.
From January to August 2022 populists and liberals engaged in “the war of position” the in congressional trenches to produce a law that they could use to campaign on that fall. In “a string of uncomfortable (intra-party) public clashes” compromise legislation was hammered out. Senate Democrats where able to use “reconciliation” to pass the legislation without having the filibuster-proof 60 votes.[3] It passed with only Democratic votes in each chamber and Vice-President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote in the Senate.[4]
Key elements of Build Back Better that were wrapped into the Inflation Reduction Act included lowers prescription drug costs, health care costs, and energy costs and unprecedented action on climate change. “Democrats erupted in raucous applause” as soon as they reached the votes required for passage.”[5]
This demonstrates that progressives, many of whom are casts as left-wing populists, were able to compromise with liberals and moderates to pass “pragmatic” legislation that was not far left but moved the needle a few ticks in the leftward direction. And progressives may not like to hear me say this, but it also shows that unlike the Republicans, the Democratic establishment has not lost control of its populist wing in ways that would prevent the party from making meaningful policy that retains some shared vision for the American people.
To summarize, while right populist who want to blow up the system now control the Republican Party, left populists have successfully engaged in the trenches in Congress to pass progressive legislation. Over 100 of the 220 Democrats who voted to pass the Inflation Reduction Act were members of the Progressive Caucus. Few if any of them would describe themselves as populists. Many of them, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) had been framed in the media to be just as scary as Republican extremists like Marjorie Taylor-Greene (Georgia) or Matt Gaetz (Florida). Yet they were among the Democrats cheering on the floor of the House when the legislation passed.
One more thing in keeping with my focus on race in my analysis. 56 of the 102 House Democrats who are members of the Progressive Caucus are people of color. While the Republican hard right embodies white nationalism, the Democratic left represents multiracial democracy, the best hope for the Progressive nation and the survival of democracy in the future.
[1] “The Logic of Right-Wing Populism,” Damani: Let’s Talk Politics. http://damanipolitics.blogspot.com/2023/05/
[2] “Brief History.” Rainbow PUSH Coalition,
www.rainbowpush.org/pages/brief_history
[3] “Reconciliation” is a parliamentary procedure that allows the Senate to approve budgetary bills without 60 votes.
[5] ibid.
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