1. Hello twitter. I've written a new book. The subject is populism. And: the people who hate populism. The recurring conflict between these two poles of our political life.

2. Populism is famously hard to define. But once it meant something specific: a radical farmer-labor movement in the 1890s. This movement was immediately redefined by plutocrat types who hated radical farmer-labor movements.

3. These plutes said populism meant "mob rule." They said it meant the resentment of the poor and the stupid for the capable and the wealthy, the people who deserved to be on top.

4. You can trace the populist tradition all through our history, right down to Bernie Sanders if you want. (Donald Trump, btw, is no populist.)

5. But it's the anti-populists who interest me. They say the same things today that they said in the 1890s and the 1950s: You can't trust the people! The anti-populist tradition is the reason, for example, why we don't have universal healthcare.

6. The populist model is about building a vast, multi-racial movement of working people for economic democracy.

7. Anti-populism, though, dreams of a utopia of scolding. Endlessly do the enlightened elite hand down reprimands upon the unlettered. The real bearer of progress, they insist, is them: the highly educated professional class.

8. Unfortunately for them, we are living through a period of elite failure/corruption almost as calamitous as the 1890s or the 1930s.

9. The elites have responded to this obvious fact by insisting that the only possible alternative to their enlightened rule is a blundering racist imbecile like Trump.

10. The message of populism is that there is another way.