Nicole Belle from Crooks and Liars had a great post I’d like to follow-up on here regarding populism. There are essentially two kinds of candidates. There are those who pander to the handful of elites to share in their power, and those who appeal to the large majority of unheard voices who have none. The former is an appeal to tyranny, while the latter is an appeal to democracy. The Huffington Post interviewed pundits (who just all happened to be white males) to ask them if John Edwards was emblematic of the populist ideals the Democratic Party says it stands for. As Nicole says, “Do you think it would be perhaps instructive to ask that question of…oh, I don’t know, maybe a woman or a minority? I mean, c’mon…Tom Edsall asks Joe Klein (!!!) but can’t ask a single woman or person of color their opinion?”

In the Americas, the interests of the common people have always run contrary to those of the establishment, of which women and minorities were purposely excluded. Populist movements in recent history, like those of Nader, Sharpton, and Kucinich, have appealed to the interests of women and minority voters. This is not to say that white males have not been an integral part of these movements, but that maintaining the white male’s preferred status as a privileged citizen is not the main goal, as it would be with perhaps more conservative ideologies. This is also why populist movements are often derided by the media elite for not being “serious” political movements. So what does it mean to be “serious”?

The Democratic Party is like most other establishments. Alhough they trumpet the virtues of equality and democracy to their female and minority constituents, their power is concentrated in the hands of white males. John Edwards is taken seriously despite his folksy populist rhetoric because of his pro-war, pro-corporate voting record. He’s a corporate commodity packaged to sell as a populist. Anytime a politician is praised as having “new and exciting” ideas, I look at my “What Would Che Do” bracelet and compare.

It also doesn’t do much for Edwards’ credibility as a populist when established white males like Tom Edsall from the Huffington Post round up a large group of other established white males to convince us of his street cred. With such a large pool of liberal writers, activists, and scholars, it seems as if Edsall purposefully excluded women and minorities from giving their opinion. Sidestepping the general populace to get an opinion on populism is a classic pseudo-liberal move, and quite fitting for a pseudo-liberal blog like the Huff Post.

So what candidates, if any, are populists? Fortunately we have tools like Glassbooth which can accurately tell us which candidates are closer to the ideals of the common man than any spin from an elite group of white males ever will.

On a side note, if you’re a white male, please don’t feign outrage. Though you do enjoy a certain level of privilege above all other demographics, I’m not implying that all white males are part of the established power structure. Certainly, women and minorities have also become part of that evil beast in recent times. Condi, Gonzales, and Powell come to mind, as well as snide pundits like Coulter, Malkin, and Kos (oh yeah, I went there). Some may think that minorities and women becoming more prevalent in the establishment is a sign of progress. I do not. These slaves have merely been given the opportunity to spread the master’s message to the rest of us still in bondage. This post on white feminism is a good visual of how things have changed, yet stayed the same.