Occupy Wall Streeters claimed that they were populists. Their ideological opposites, the Tea Partiers, said they were, too. Both became polarizing. And so far populism, whether on the right or left, does not seem to have made inroads with the traditional Republican and Democrat<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/4995090651_deb33b4738.jpg?resize=259%2C300&ssl=1\" "\\"flickr.com\\"")
<\/p>\n
establishments.<\/p>\n
Gas has gone up about $2 a gallon since Barack Obama took office. Given average yearly rates of national consumption, that increase alone translates into an extra $1 trillion that American drivers have collectively paid in higher fuel costs over the last 54 months.<\/p>\n
Such a crushing burden on the cash-strapped commuter class is rarely cited in the liberal fixation on cap-and-trade, wind and solar subsidies, and the supposed dangers of fracking.<\/p>\n
When the president scaled back the number of new gas and oil leases on federal lands over time, or warned that \u201cunder my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,\u201d he was appealing to his boutique base \u2014 not to those who can scarcely meet their monthly heating and cooling bills.<\/p>\n
Should there not be an opening for a conservative populist response?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, pro-drilling conservatives sound more like spokesmen for oil companies than grassroots champions for strapped motorists.<\/p>\n
Total student debt is approaching $1 trillion. That is an unsustainable burden for recent graduates under 25 facing an adjusted youth unemployment rate of over 20 percent.<\/p>\n
Yet the well-off are more interested in ensuring that their children get into tony, name-brand colleges than in fretting about how to pay for it \u2014 a fact well known to our price-gouging universities.<\/p>\n
On the other end, need- and ethnicity-based scholarships and waivers have made college more affordable for the poor than it is for the middle classes. The parents of the latter make enough to be disqualified from most government help, but not enough to afford soaring tuition.<\/p>\n
Top-heavy universities assume that there will always be more income from the subsidized poor and the rich. Again, middle-class students are caught up a creek without the paddles of wealthy parents or a generous government.<\/p>\n
There is also a populist argument to be made against the farm bill.<\/p>\n
There are more than 48 million Americans on food stamps, an increase of about 12 million since the beginning of the Obama presidency.<\/p>\n
At a time of record-high crop prices, the U.S. government still helps well-off farmers with some $20 billion in annual crop payouts and indirect subsidies.<\/p>\n
The Left mythicizes food-stamp recipients almost as if they all must be the Cratchits of Dickensian England.<\/p>\n
The Right romanticizes corporate agriculture as if the growers all were hardscrabble family farmers in need of a little boost to get through another tough harvest.<\/p>\n
Those in between, who pay federal income taxes and are not on food stamps, lack the empathy of the poor and the clout of the rich. Can\u2019t a politician say that?<\/p>\n
Illegal immigration is likewise not a Left\u00a0vs.\u00a0Right or Republican vs. Democrat issue, but instead mostly one of class.<\/p>\n
The influx of millions of illegal immigrants has ensured corporate America access to cheap labor while offering a growing constituency for political and academic elites.<\/p>\n
Yet the earning power of poorer American workers \u2014 especially African Americans and Hispanic Americans \u2014 has stagnated.<\/p>\n
The common bond between the agendas of La Raza activists and the corporate world is apparently a relative lack of concern for the welfare of entry-level laborers, many of them in American inner cities, who are competing against millions of illegal workers.<\/p>\n
Given the slow-growth, high-unemployment economy, and the policies of the Federal Reserve, interest on simple passbook accounts has all but vanished.<\/p>\n
The poor are not so affected. They are more often borrowers than lenders, and they are sometime beneficiaries of federally subsidized debt relief.<\/p>\n
The rich have the capital and connections to find more profitable investments in real estate or the stock market that make them immune from pedestrian, underperforming savings accounts.<\/p>\n
In other words, this administration\u2019s loose money policy has been good for the indebted and even better for the stock-invested rich. But it is absolutely lousy for the middle class and for strapped retirees with a few dollars in conservative passbook accounts.<\/p>\n
The aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown followed the same script. The crisis arose from a strange connivance between loans to the unqualified and huge profits for Wall Street. Its remedy was to have the lowly taxpayer pick up the walk-away debt of the former while offering bailouts for the latter.<\/p>\n
Polls show the president\u2019s approval numbers are tanking. Congress can hardly become any more unpopular. Maybe one reason is that neither seems to care much about those who are not rich and not poor.<\/p>\n
America has plenty of community organizers and agitators, and even more smooth corporate lobbyists, but populist politicians disappeared long ago.<\/p>\n
NRO\u00a0contributor<\/em>\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the\u00a0Hoover Institution<\/a>. His\u00a0<\/em>The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is just out from\u00a0<\/em>Bloomsbury<\/em>\u00a0Books.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a9 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plenty of pleaders for rich and poor, but no politician speaks for the common man. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online Occupy Wall Streeters claimed that they were populists. Their ideological opposites, the Tea Partiers, said they were, too. Both became polarizing. And so far populism, whether on the right or left, does not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6293,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,136],"tags":[643,88,338,213,83,527,1052,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/4995090651_deb33b4738.jpg?fit=433%2C500&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Du","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11208,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-good-populism\/","url_meta":{"origin":6292,"position":0},"title":"The Good Populism","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ The New Criterion Populism is today seen both as a pejorative and positive noun. In fact, in the present age, there are two sorts of populism. Both strains originated in classical times and persisted in the West until today. One in antiquity was known as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Populism"","block_context":{"text":"Populism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/populism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1088,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/postmodern-populism\/","url_meta":{"origin":6292,"position":1},"title":"Postmodern Populism","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Newt\u00a0Gingrich\u00a0soaring in the polls 90 days ago \u2014 with an inspired strategy of critiquing Obama, reprimanding the left-wing media during the debates, playing down his ego while showing mastery of the issues, and calling for an end to internecine bickering \u2014 stumbled for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9842,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-uses-of-populism\/","url_meta":{"origin":6292,"position":2},"title":"The Uses of Populism","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review The economy, academia, immigration, and the environment could benefit from Trump\u2019s unorthodox approach. Populism of the center (as opposed to Bernie Sanders\u2019s socialist populism) has received a bad media rap \u2014 given that it was stained in the past by xenophobic and chauvinistic currents.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Democrats"","block_context":{"text":"Democrats","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/democrats\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6480,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/populism-lives-at-nro\/","url_meta":{"origin":6292,"position":3},"title":"Populism Lives at NRO","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"We depend on thousands of small contributors. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 National Review Online\u00a0imposes no litmus test on its contributors. The result each day \u2014 to take the most recent hot-button issue \u2014 is that columnists both support and oppose the proposed Syrian intervention, though usually from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8443,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-home-of-intellectual-populism-could-use-your-help\/","url_meta":{"origin":6292,"position":4},"title":"The Home of Intellectual Populism Could Use Your Help","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 29, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ NRO- The Corner I have written for National Review since the third bleak day after September 11, 2001, and have not missed a column since. I live and work on the West Coast, but the editors and writers at NR in New York over the years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11374,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hanson-struggle-between-elites-and-masses-defines-us-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":6292,"position":5},"title":"Hanson: Struggle Between Elites And Masses Defines US Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Clifton Parker \/\/ Hoover Institution Victor Davis Hanson says history offers lessons for today\u2019s technology-driven world, especially when it comes to elites, the masses, and the future of society. \u201cWhen the masses feel their will is not reflected in government policies or respected by the professional classes that manages society,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6294,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6292\/revisions\/6294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}