Reject Populism

James Pinkerton writes that Democrats have lost power because they have lost touch with the Jacksonian origins of the party, including militaristic working class voters who are also anti-big government, anti-business, culturally conservative, and in favor of middle class protections. These voters tend to be rural, and they tend to vote Republican. These voters dislike complex arguments because they suspect it is a cover for fraud. Thus, they go for straight talk. They like bombast and swagger as a way to accomplish things both nationally and internationally. He argues that the way to get these voters back is to return to the Jacksonian tradition, and to favor economic populism that is anti-corporate, anti-wealthy, and in favor of a limited welfare state that helps the middle class.

This is an important argument because it is the most dangerous thing the Democratic party can do. To recall the Jacksonian element of the Democratic Party is like recalling the Lincolnian element of the Republican Party, which is in favor of government activism to deal with both social and economic problems. The Lincolnian element disappeared in the 1960s as the Republican Party became the Jacksonian Party. Today's Democratic Party is the party of Lincoln, while Today's Republican Party is the Party of Jackson. However, Lincoln is more fondly remembered, and for good reason.

It is impossible to take the Democratic Party back to the Jacksonian ideals because we deliberately rejected those ideas in the 1960s and 70s. Here are the basic problems of economic populism for the Democratic party. First, it is a temporary solution, not a long-term fix. It focuses only on the middle class and not on the need for a classless society. Second, and more important, the era in which Jacksonian ideals were needed has passed. Jackson fought the Indians, and the United States was expanding its frontiers. The Indians were determined foes, and they were best fought on the local level. Consequently, the best American ideal was the frontier spirit: direct, lofty, and willing to bear any burden. This ideal has been adopted as our national heritage as the U.S. keeps going after different frontiers, pursuing lofty goals.

180 years later, the environment no longer calls for the frontier spirit as much as it calls for a careful balancing act. The U.S. has extended its borders to both oceans, and is increasingly its population every year. Geographical frontiers are a thing of the past, and social frontiers are also gone since African Americans, women, Hispanics, gays, and other minority groups have won their rights. The frontier of space has been conquered. There are only two things left. The frontier of the mind and the frontiers of other countries. The frontier of the mind is always receding as we do more research. Basic scientific research is party of the American identity. The frontiers of other countries are also receding as the globalized economic system knits countries closer together. The challenge with these frontiers is the ability to process massive amounts of information and produce sound judgment from that information. Once the information is processed, the implementation of decisions requires a balancing act to keep different interest groups happy, and to communicate among the different fields.

The Age of the Jacksonian Democrat, in other words, is over. Technology and the information age ushered it out. Directness is fine when you live on the prairie or the frontier because you need to quickly coordinate a response to any given emergency. Today, directness is passe, and harmful, because we live in an age of different interest groups. There is so many protections against catastrophe that we no longer need direct communicate to avert emergencies. Even when we are caught off guard be a massive terrorist attack, it is not because of a failure to be direct but because of a failure to process massive amounts of information to produce a decision.

The citizen of the future will be highly educated and an urban or ex-urban dweller. It is not enough anymore to have a swagger and communicate directly. Now, we need careful explanations for everything, because science and technology are influencing every aspect of our lives.

It is necessary to consider this new age because that is what wins elections. The central problem with the democratic party at this very moment is that it thinks it lost the presidential election and the congressional election due to its failure to grasp cultural and moral issues. Yet, there is a massive amount of evidence out there that the 2004 election was stolen. The ever-accurate exit polls contradicted the final result by a massive amount, and they were contradicted only where electronic voting was used. There were numerous accounts of too few voting machines in democratic districts, but too many voting machines in republican districts. It is impossible for Bush to have won this election because even after he was declared "the winner", his approval rating was at or below 50 percent, with the most recent rating of 44 percent. A person who has just won re-election does not have an approval rating of 44 percent only 2 months later. Simply put, I predict that in at most 2 years, we will see evidence of fraudulent computer programs and conspiracy to manipulate the vote in favor of Republicans.

Many of the ideas that New Age Democrats have overlap with the populist manifesto, but they contain a different them. A populist wants you to benefit economically, and therefore be financially secure and free. A New Age Democrat wants you to be able to benefit economically so that you don't have to work two jobs, but can instead stay in one job that is closer to what you desire as your purpose in life. A populist wants you to have health care coverage so that you are not forced to choose between health care and food. A New Age democrat wants you to have community health care coverage provided by a local doctor, but he especially wants to prevent health care problems by practicing preventive medicine. A populist has strong nationalistic sentiment, but a New Age Democrat knows that nationalism doesn't work well in the era of globalization. Thus, the New Age Democrat favors community on an international scale as well as on a local scale.

In sum, there is a reason why the Democratic Party rejected the Jacksonian ideals of the blue-collar, middle class worker. Jacksonian ideals promote domestic brutality, low education, ignorance, and cultural conservatism, all of which the New Age Democrat dislikes. Direct language is brutal language, and it leads very easily to physical brutality. The New Age Democrat wants everyone to learn to live with each other peacefully, meaning that we must choose our words carefully before we speak so that we consider the reaction of the listener. Low education, or a suspicion of complexity, is a handicap in today's world that operates on complex systems. The New Age Democrat is highly education and loves complexity because he is integrated with those systems. Cultural conservatism must be eliminated as the U.S. incorporates more of a global culture that includes Hispanics, Asians, Africans, and Arabs. The U.S. is the promoter of globalization, and so it is the first global country. That means that the U.S. is no longer a Christian nation. The U.S. is a pluralistic nation, giving the rest of the world a perfect example of how people from different cultures can live together in harmony. The U.S. will no longer force immigrants to learn English or adopt a Judeo-Christian ethic because we know that we want immigrants to maintain their traditional cultures. Instead, the U.S. accommodates those immigrants, using its superior information technology to facilitate communication between all cultures. Indeed, the U.S. is now taking over the role of the biblical Tower of Babel. That is what the New Age is all about: global unity and free information exchange. The Jacksonian Democrat is inherently a social separatist, an economic protectionist, and an anti-community individualist. The world no longer needs that type of person. Today's world is the world of the harmonious collective, well-balanced so that all people can achieve their dreams with their community intact.