Why populism and liberalism don't mix in American politics

[All Along The Watchtower]

Some on the liberal/Left of the American political spectrum have argued that more populism is needed in American politics. But the problem with this thinking is that populism isn't an ideology, but is rather, expression of the dominant ideology and cultural norms of the "common people", however defined. And the "common people" of populism are inevitably the dominant social and cultural groups, in America and elsewhere.

This is part of why populism in the modern United States trend toward the right-wing in form;  the white, suburban, middle-class, Christian, nuclear family model that has dominated America's mass cultural imagination since the Cold War (nevermind that it was never really a reality, the ideal was what was important) is something that the Right can implicitly and reflexively point to as something for the "real Americans" to "take back."

Liberals, for their part, mostly recognize the Right's populist appeals for what they are; silliness at best, demagoguery at worst. Yet liberals by their nature can't really appeal to "the masses"  in terms of cultural credibility, because liberals tend to focus their appeals to "the masses" on individual economic self-interest-which is just not good enough for the vast majority of people (Liberals also don't help matters when they call ordinary people stupid, ignorant, uneducated, etc....)

So liberalism by its nature is generally anti-populist. I suppose you could point to the rare FDR or whomever who could connect with common people while being surrounded by technocratic liberal intellectuals. But given that the labor movement is essentially dead in the United States, there's simply no way of bridging the gap between liberalism and populism these days.

(Thanks to Nathan for inspiring me to write this post).