The Mainstream vs The Political Class

Ask yourself these three questions:

1)  Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgement do you trust more: America's voting public, or America's political leaders?

2)  The Federal Government has become a special-interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests.  Do you agree or disagree?

3)  Corporate America and the Federal Government often work together in ways that hurt both consumers and investors.  Do you agree or disagree?

Research for a recent paper in one of my grad school classes led me to this simple questionnaire by a pollster named Scott Rasmussen.  My research topic was religious populism, and this gentleman's work has been in the area of what defines populism (of both the right and the left).  His thesis is that left vs. right, conservative vs. liberal, is not, after all, the main divide in this country.  Both ends of the political spectrum are frustrated with congress and mistrust politics in general.  They only differ on what form solutions should take, not that we need some.  Right-leaning populists advocate limiting the role of  government in private and societal matters, left-leaning populists (aka progressives) see a positive role for government if properly focused and guided.

People who answered "yes" to the above three questions are what Rasmussen calls the "mainstream", whether left-leaning, or right-leaning.  Those who answered "no" to the above questions may also be left- or right-leaning, but would be considered part of the "political class".  They are what populists refer to as "elites", who are not down in the trenches living life on the unemployment line or shopping at thrift stores to get by.

Polling data shows that there is a bigger gap between the Mainstream and the Political Class than there is between those who identify as Democrats or Republicans, or as liberals or conservatives.  On question 3, for example, there is no gap between voters affiliated with the two political parties or with the two ideologies.  There is a huge gap, though, between those who answered the above questions as "mainstreamers" and those who answered as "politicos".

And that defines populism (of the left or of the right) in a nutshell.  Populists do not trust the political class - they trust, by definition, the collective wisdom of the people.  Populists also favor the interests of the people over the interests of the elites, whether the elites are national-level politicians, heads of multinational corporations, powerful labor leaders, rich televangelists, Ivy League intellectuals, entertainer/athletes, investment bankers, or anyone else who lives in an alternate reality than does mainstream America.

And in Iowa in the next few months, the Political Class comes to rub up against the Mainstream, and see whom they can fool.  They've certainly succeeded before, and will probably do so again.