Populism in American Politics: Past and Present

1615 Words4 Pages

According to Merriam-Webster a populist is “a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people…” The populist movement has been around since the Jacksonian era and since then we have seen populist politicians rise and fall from power. One of the most notable populists in American history is William Jennings Bryan, a young Democrat from Nebraska, ran for President in 1896 against William McKinley a Gilded Age Republican. Jennings campaigned to those who thought the American economy was corrupt and pushing them out of the system. Similarly, Donald Trump told a similar narrative. Trump preached the idea to make “America Great” once again. His goal is to return America to its former glory and to make sure the common man has his …show more content…

This is not merely our opinion, and is not merely a party opinion. It is the profound belief of patriotic men without distinction of party and in every section of the country” (New York Daily Tribune, 1896). In 1896 American was dramatically changing. This was the start of the industrial revolution, the capitalist elites rising to power, and debatably the first modern campaign. The era of the Republicans using the Civil War to mobilize voters was slowly coming to an end, hence the change of the platform. Republicans were to party of the common folk until Mark Hanna, McKinley’s campaign manager and representative from Ohio, introduced campaign financing to American politics. They relied on the elites, like Rockefeller, to help fund their campaign and used that to their advantage. Even Hanna said himself that “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is” (Hanna, …show more content…

Both of these men both ran a populist campaign, which begs the question: what made Trump successful and not Bryan? Like Bryan Trump preached that the government needs to fix the economy to help the average American because it is “so unfair”. Additionally, Trump’s “indifference to the issues of sexual orientation that animate the declining religious right, even to the point of defending Planned Parenthood. Trump’s platform combines positions that are shared by many populists but are anathema to movement conservatives—a defense of Social Security, a guarantee of universal health care, economic nationalist trade policies” (Lind, 2016). On Trump’s website he has short clips explaining how he feels on certain issues. For his “Jobs” video he states that “…I will tell you this and I can say it with certainty, I will be the greatest jobs producing President that God ever created. I love the subject, I love doing it, and I love helping people and there’s nothing like helping people like getting them and their family great jobs” (Trump 2016). Additionally, his tax plan and trade policy appeals to both upper-class and working class Americans. Trump’s vision for his trade policy is to “negotiate fair trade deals that create American jobs, increase American wages, and reduce America’s trade deficit” (Trump 2016). His promise to cut of trades with China, the Trans-Pacific Partnership,

Open Document