Catching Palin fever
Okay, not really, but I was procrastinating tonight and decided to listen to her speech (which was an interesting experience in and of itself due to no TV and a sketchy internet connection). I thought she came across well, and for Democrats there will be a danger of overreaching in expecting her selection to be a big mistake. Yes, there are
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I do think you're right that the historic defeat of Populism has something to do with this - there was a culture of rural-inflected radicalism which withered on the vine, so to speak - though perhaps the NDP preserves that spirit, in lukewarm ways, in some localities?? In the US, the story of this defeat is truly a sad one - the absorption of most of the Populists into the Democratic Party, W. J. Bryan's turn to a defense of the most backwards cultural politics (creationism), and a turn toward promotion of white racism (after a few early, contradictory attempts at a coalitional racial politics within Populism). It is unclear to me whether Populism ever had a shot at challenging white workers' attachment to white privilege, but it probably had a better shot than any political movement since.
In any case, when Republicans say that Democrats represent elite East-Coast interests or Hollywood stars who don't share your non-cosmopolitan values, the critique resonates, even if Democrats can reply with perfect logic that the Republicans are huge hypocrites - and someone like Palin certainly helps them mask the hypocrisy (as did Huckabee, during the primaries). The fact is there's a huge political "hole" as far as anyone who would lead a countervaling sentiment, at least outside of Michael Moore in his early years. Unions can often lead their members in terms of voting, but largely through an economic-corporate reasoning that fails to translate to family members, let alone a broader community.
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