Populism: Why can't we use it?

[wonkwest]

22. Populism is how Millennial political power is going to be expressed.

The Old Guard is quite against it. They keep thinking if they just do the same things they've always done, somehow they'll eventually win.

And you know what? In this cycle, that may just work. But it will work because Trump is such an unmitigated disaster. He's taking the Republican Party down with him (which is their own damn fault). But some will read into this as, "See? Toldja we didn't need to change!" This is a grave error.

I've been reading on this board and many other places, this constant stomping on progressivism, populism, and Millennial politics. How long can this feasibly go on? Instead of incorporating and including a generation that will soon come into its political power, we're met with sneering, bashing, hostility, and sometimes outright hatred.

This massive hatred of Ocasia-Cortez floors me. She is an early piece of the coming Democratic future.

But the hatred.

I realize a lot of this has to do with Sanders and 2016 wounds that have festered and apparently need constant picking at, but the Old Guard alienates Millennials at their peril. The party needs us. Don't slap us in the face and then bitch that they don't do what you want them to. It's counter-intuitive to human nature.

Millennials are so desperate that populism is coming with that generation, whether establishment types and their supporters like it or not. Fail to address the basic pain of an entire generation, and you make populism an inevitability.

The question for the next five to ten years is whether or not the Democratic Party embraces it in such a way that they can help inform, shape, and control the impulse, or if they resist and continue on with the hostility, leading to a much more volatile intra-party conflict in the not so distant future.

This seems like common sense to me. I think people are too wrapped up in personalities, in emotions, in partisan loyalty. I see very little thinking happening on this issue. I see a lot of reactionary impulses. This is not going to bode well for us. If it weren't for Trumps rolling apocalypse, we might've continued failing going forward. As it is now, I think we have good chances in this midterm and in 2020.