The populist imperative. (Populism A Response).(response to Sean Wilentz denunciation of populism and Wilentz's response)

SEAN WILENTZ CHALLENGES THE contention that Democrats need to become more populist. He does so by reminding us of the uglier side of 19th-century Populism--that's Populism with a capital "P." But no modern Democrats are proposing the racism or the nativism that indeed curdled the Populists of that era.

By invoking, and denouncing, 19th-century Populism and painting a very airbrushed picture of Democrats since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Wilentz papers over an enduring schism in the modern Democratic Party. It is a schism that persists today, and it needs to be ...

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