The challenge of populism

An excerpt from an editorial in the Guardian:

There is a fundamental challenge in how to confront nativist populism without further alienating the voters who are attracted by its proponents.

Trumpeting the economic benefits of migration, for example, does little to shift opinion among people who do not believe those benefits accrue to them. Fact-checking doesn’t reach those who reject the authority of the fact-checkers.

There is an idiom of anti-populist rebuttal that comes across as a sneer, treating voters as dupes, unhelpfully bundling deep-rooted cultural disorientation with far-right aggression.

The roots of populism are deep and primarily economic, despite the objectionable way they often find expression. Telling voters the problem they raise has no easy solution sounds like an excuse for inaction. Or it leads to technocratic tinkering.

There is a demand for big answers and radical political ambition. The appeal to pragmatism too often sounds like code for defeatism or denial of the scale of public discontent.

The appetite for drastic upheaval must be met with optimism and imagination. Credible responses to social and economic distress do not have to be modest. Appeals to a collective national interest and rhetoric of collective solidarity can be made without scapegoats. A platform needs compelling political expression to have a chance of being delivered.

No one says being radical and realistic is easy, but too much is at stake to surrender and say it is too hard.