In a depression, voters want populism. If they can find potent New Deal economic populism, they will vote for it every time, as US elections between 1932 and 1944 show without a shadow of a doubt. But if they do not find economic populism, they can easily fall prey to the cynical demagogy of cultural populism. That is what has happened in Massachusetts.
The only way to be an economic populist is the shift the cost of the world economic depression and the tax burden generally onto Wall Street financial interests, that is to say onto the malefactors of great wealth who created this crisis in the first place. That is the recipe for winning elections in a depression.
Most Democrats appear to be too far gone on the road to plutocracy to learn that lesson. It therefore may well be time to create a new party to represent the one major political current in American life which is not represented by either of the two big parties of the day. In other words, we desperately need, one way or another, a New Deal economic populist party to lead this country and much of the world out of the world economic depression.
