Gotta confess ... I'm a sucker for populist rhetoric.
But if ever there was an illustration of how populist rhetoric can translate to a huge letdown on the fulfillment end, it was the '16 election.
In Bernie and Trump, you had essentially the same "populist disruptor" campaign with differing ideological tilts. Both were based on wooing the voters who felt their voices weren't being heard. As we've seen, the "angry old white people" side of the argument held sway ... in just enough "persuadable" swing state districts.
November 2016 marked the amplification of the so-called "culture wars." How do we know war has been declared? Because the Hannity Gang says so. But is '16 when warfare began? Probably not.
In '08 we were jubilant, for good reason, that we elected our first African American president. Good for us! And good for Barack, too, as he was honored with a Nobel Prize without even breaking a sweat in his first year. Hmm...trouble brewing.
In the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney got caught telling the truth to a fundraiser crowd when he noted that 47% of folks had their minds made up on both sides, so it's time to work on the middle. Apparently the truth does not always set you free, as a perfectly plausible moderate Republican candidate failed to win enough hearts and minds.
Through Obama II, the Progressive Left got drunk with its (perceived) power and heightened its platform of "pay attention...we know what's best for you." The result was the sluggish Dem campaign in '16 that was outfoxed by perhaps the sharpest marketing mind in the history of presidential politics.
But while he exerted massive authoritarian power in the first three years of his term, The Donald and his team apparently ignored or forgot that he had a 47% ceiling, a truism proved again in November 2020.
Oh, but wait ... back to the war, the great Culture War matching The Working Class vs. the Intellectual Elites. Regrettably, the highest number of casualties are among the sensible Moderates in the middle who are drowned out by the shrill extremist voices on both ends.
On the Left, do the Progressives really think that most people want to cancel out George Washington and Abraham Lincoln? Skip right past gender-neutral and go to genderless society? Or forgive the debts of people positioned to earn higher wages than "essential workers?" Ehh, maybe not so much.
But when faced with a choice between that and gun-toting, Confederate flag-waving militants, the masses swarming into the Atlanta suburbs, which should have been fertile ground for traditional Republicanism, made the more rational choice. And that's how a traditional Red state swings over to the Blue column.
So as the war rages on, do traditional Republicans honestly think there are enough Proud Boys to hike the Trumpkin ceiling beyond 47%? Apparently they must, as they continue their cowardly kow-tow to the man who sold The Big Lie.