The Mercury (Pottstown, PA)

Populism dies with bill that takes from poor, gives to rich

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Populism, RIP. It croaked on a birthday of sorts. This month marks 10 years since the Great Recession — and thereby the social movement it unleashed — was born.

This obituary begins in December 2007, when the spark of the financial crisis grew into a fire. The conflagrat­ion would go on to blaze through more than 8 million jobs, trillions of dollars in wealth, millions of foreclosed homes and half the value of the stock market.

Older and middle-age workers would lose jobs and nest eggs. Younger workers would get stuck in dead-end careers, if they could find careers at all, and fall behind on milestones of adulthood such as homeowners­hip and marriage.

And millions of children would grow up watching their parents stress about money. Some would come to wonder whether socialism was really such a dirty word after all.

For some, populism took a decidedly leftist strain.

The Occupy Movement demanded a pound of flesh from Wall Street, as well as an entirely new social contract. You can draw a straight line between those who camped in Zuccotti Park in 2011 and the broader movement that last year agitated for single-payer health care, free college and other forms of economic redistribu­tion.

Plenty of other populists broke right.

Like their socialist brethren, these populists hated Wall Street bailouts, but they hated handouts going to their undeservin­g neighbors even more. They asked: Why should their mortgages be written off, when my home is also underwater? Why should they get food stamps, when I struggle to put dinner on the table?

I cannot tell you how many of the unemployed workers I interviewe­d during the recession and its aftermath blamed their inability to find work on employers’ supposed favoritism of the young (if they themselves were old) or of the old (if they were young), of men (if they were women), of women (if they were men) and of the nonwhite (if they were white).

Those on the populist, antiestabl­ishment left eventually found a savior in a socialist senator from Vermont. The populist, anti-establishm­ent right chose a billionair­e con artist. Both leaders vowed to deliver policies that would reward their acolytes and punish entrenched special interests. In the end, only those on the populist right successful­ly took over a major political party, and later the country. But what did they win, really? Did they get the great economic de-rigging they demanded?

A fair shake for good, wholesome folk like themselves?

The draining, at last, of the swamp? No. Instead, a week ago, the Trump administra­tion began dismantlin­g the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a post-financial crisis creation designed specifical­ly to protect the little guy from scam artists and swamp creatures.

And then, in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Senate passed the most plutocrati­c, regressive, system-rigging piece of tax legislatio­n in decades. A bill that allows multimilli­onaires to pass on their estates tax-free. That offers one special break to owners of private jets and another to those who send their kids to private school.

A bill that literally takes from the poor to give to the rich.

Republican­s know how unpopular it is, and they just don’t care.

Instead, they expect the populist right to be satisfied with some race-baiting tweets.

Some mean-spirited, occasional­ly unconstitu­tional immigratio­n policies. The satisfacti­on of having a president who makes liberals angry.

Yes, friends. Populism, at least as a political force capable of extracting meaningful policy concession­s, is truly, officially, undeniably dead.

The time of its demise: Saturday, Dec. 2, a little before 2 a.m.

 ??  ?? Catherine Rampell Columnist
Catherine Rampell Columnist

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