Notes

Two concepts of populism. With U.S. President Joe Biden announcing he won’t seek reelection in November, the American news media has—unsurprisingly, if not naturally—kicked off intensive coverage of his presumptive successor as the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her chances of winning in his place. How much money is she raising? What are her poll numbers like? Who will she pick as her running mate? Fair enough.

But the question for American voters, who’ll determine the outcome of the election, isn’t whether Harris will win but how the Democrats would govern under her leadership if she does. For many, that question has already been answered by partisan messaging or media narratives. But for the rest, it’ll be answered by the substance of the policy agenda she advances—and, not least, the style of the political rhetoric she advances it in.

Her opponent, Donald Trump, has his own policy priorities—from ending illegal immigration to dismantling the existing federal bureaucracy—but they all belong to a signature style, a form of populism that pits his supporters against his opponents, often foreigners, and sometimes the U.S. government itself. The style is central to what makes Trump feel as clear and compelling to his supporters as he does.

As David Kusnet, President Bill Clinton’s former chief speechwriter, noted during the first year of the current presidency, Trump won in 2016 because he spoke to “Americans who might have voted for Clinton and Obama but felt let down by the political and economic system.” Vastly outspent by Hillary Clinton, Trump did what she couldn’t—capitalize on broad and deep feelings of disaffection and dislocation in America. It was apparent to Kusnet then that this style wouldn’t be Trump’s alone but ascendant in the Republican Party as a whole. Several Republican lawmakers, including one J.D. Vance, were already experimenting with variations on the theme.

But as Kusnet also pointed out, Biden adopted a populist style of his own, throughout his 2020 campaign and from the outset of his presidency—a “progressive populism” that emphasizes the economy and its bearing on everyday people. The two styles represent two traditions in American politics. To Kusnet, the underlying idea of the cultural tradition Trump represents is, “They think they’re better than you are,” whereas the underlying idea of the economic tradition Biden has represented is, “They’re robbing you blind.”

Biden may not have condemned “millionaires and billionaires” with the same frequency or force as the Democratic senator and self-identifying socialist Bernie Sanders has. Still, Biden has repeatedly framed aspects of his policy agenda as responses to “corporate greed” on behalf of the American working and middle classes. It’s been a relatively forbearing mode of economic populism, Kusnet says, “because it doesn’t attack the wealthy, as such; it just attacks policies that favor the wealthy.” But it’s an idiom that can speak powerfully to millions of undecided voters.

—Gustav Jönsson