The New Democratic Populism

[Sapphire Blue]

The New Democratic Populism
Christopher Hayes

Everyone wants Virginia's Senator-elect Jim Webb to talk about Iraq, but the man The Weekly Standard recently called a "blood-and-soil conservative" wants to talk about something else: economic inequality. The day after he accepted George Allen's concession, Webb barely let his NPR interviewer get a word in edgewise before jumping in to correct the misperception that his bid for office was motivated solely by opposition to the war. "I decided to run because of my concern...with the economic breakdown that's happened in this country along class lines."

Class lines? Mr. Webb is a man who has railed against the "collectivist taming" of American culture by Marxists and has served in the Reagan Administration. So why is he talking like Eugene Debs? "There are huge income inequalities...that we haven't seen since the 1880s," he said on NPR. "And wages and salaries...are at an all-time low as a percentage of wealth."

As idiosyncratic as he is, Webb is not an anomaly. He's part of a broader trend that has been obscured by the fast-congealing conventional wisdom that the election results were driven chiefly by the ongoing disaster in Iraq. If you drill down a little into those results, it's clear that Iraq and Republican scandal can't account for all the Democratic victory. Consider the Democrats' success at the state level. The party picked up six governors, nine legislative chambers and more than 300 state legislative seats, none of which can plausibly be ascribed to discontent over Iraq.

As Webb suggests, the hidden story of the election was the appeal of economic populism in a country whose middle class is increasingly feeling the squeeze. Coast to coast, Democrats running for local and national office campaigned on raising the minimum wage, repealing welfare for Big Oil and opposing trade deals lacking protection for workers and the environment, and their message resonated with an electorate anxious about the economy. Half of all voters rated the economy not good or poor, and a full 69 percent said their family's economic situation had either gotten worse or stayed the same since the last election. Democrats won both these groups by wide margins.

Continued @ http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061204/hayes

Class Struggle - American workers have a chance to be heard.: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009246
(by Jim Webb)

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Democrats have ears and can be sued ,unlike the 'Dominion Theocracy'

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. kick