Political labels get warped to suit whatever argument an individual is making in the moment so trying to solidify them is a fool's errand. Being a fool myself, I'll give it a quick shot:

I believe there is a fundamental difference between:
Populism &
Progressivism.

And this difference can maybe help explain the Left as it's presently constructed & operating.

Progressivism is a top-to-middle-down reform effort. The Real Smart People trying to make conditions better. Progressive movements found numbers among the educated middle-class going back to its origins at the beginning of the 20th century...

Progressive movements didn't significantly challenge systems of power; they sought to make those systems "work" better. Some of these efforts were worthwhile (anti-trust) while others were not (prohibition).

Populism is a *bottom-up* movement, driven by large numbers of ordinary, often struggling people. Its dawn happened in the 1890s in the South & Great Plains among farmers decimated by monopoly interests.

Progressivism and Populism CAN have overlapping interests. Both seek to limit corporate power over people's lives and often favor broader social programs. But the drivers of each movement contain very different constituencies.

Some people, especially after her attacks on Bernie, argued that Elizabeth Warren wasn't a "true" progressive. She's very much a true progressive; she just reveals what a lot of people didn't previously realize they didn't like about Progressivism.

Warren is a former Harvard Law professor trying to make markets function more smoothly. Her base of educated, more affluent citizens didn't question their elevated place in the world; they just wanted the bottom to be a little easier to live in.

Warren and her supporters are NOT populists, a group who has always had an uneasy & often adversarial relationship with the world of academia and "expertise."

@thomasfrank_ wrote about this in regards to healthcare last year: https://mondediplo.com/2020/08/02populism-expertise

Media figures & pundits who called Warren a 'populist' don't understand the term, in part because of the bastardization of meaning I talk about at the beginning of the thread. But also because they don't recognize the class dynamics at work:

But "populism" as a whole failed as well. Why? Because even large segments of the Left that rejected Warren still possess many of the same characteristics of her base. College-educated with ambitions in the professional world. Bernie's base was YOUNG but not working-class.

Consider the rhetoric around Bernie's campaign and his surrogates/supporters: How often did you hear about student debt forgiveness versus trade & agricultural policy? He appealed to Progressives, more so than Warren, but not the old populist base of rural Americans...

Because Progressivism ultimately features reform on the terms of the "winners" of the world, it's not a significant threat to power. It can be co-opted.

Hillary called herself a "progressive who gets things done."

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has 92 members.

Whereas "populism" is a word that often comes up in the rhetoric of business leaders and "experts" in the Imperialist realm: Anne Applebaum, Ray Dalio, George Soros...and it's a term they revile.

Right-wing leaders like Trump & Bolsonaro get tagged with the "populist" label, which is wrong but suits the interests of power because they want to pervert the movement with reactionary bullshit. And there's no meaningful left-wing alternative, not in America.

Populism, one truly driven by working-class and agricultural interests, is both the only way to shift power dynamics in this country and also completely divorced from the present Left. Progressivism is something else entirely.

The Left knows this, which is why we see so much effort to "win" by abolishing the Electoral College & the Filibuster & adding new states with the idea that they'll vote Democrat.

Why isn't there real energy deployed at winning over the Dakotas? Populism was born on the prairie.