Eh, they might both be protectionist but I don't think Bernie would kick his redistribution or excessive registration kneecapping the free market.
We must be wary of the implicit assumption that typical populist agenda is, ah... economically sensible. Obviously it has valid points (some
very valid), and is by definition rooted in real (and unduly ignored-by-the-elite) grievances, but that does not mean that the populist solutions are uniformly good. Or even uniform at all; a certain degree of ad hoc incoherence is rather typical of truly populist movements.
Take a good look at Trump's ideas. There's some stuff in there that's pretty "un-republican" by traditional standards, too. That's not a fluke. The party that becomes the populist one will cease to be the party that it had been in earlier periods. The triumph of a populist agenda will not be the triumph of the GOP, but rather the culmination of its... evolution... into something else.
(The fact that populism is economically rather "left-wing", if we are to use such an imprecise term, is one reason why it has no real staying power, either. If you want a return to fiscal conservatism and more traditional -- distinctly non- and even
anti-modern -- economic appoaches, then you must look beyond the populist phase, and beyond the age of mass democracy itself; towards the Principate...)
This viewpoint betrays as fundamental misunderstanding of the internal Republican dynamics and frankly speaks ill of Macro-historians being able to see the bigger picture. Either that or a fundamental misunderstanding of the core conflict within American politics. This may be because Macro-historians refuse to see the US AS the outlier country it is and insist it must be beholden to the patterns of Western Europe rather than having it's own macro-historical trajectory.
Bear in mind, from their inception to the present day, the Republican party is the party of the Middle Class. Within the US, unlike many countries of the world, the Middle class IS the majority, not the lower class or the upper class. This was the case at the founding of the Country, continued through the 19th century and the industrial revolution, and generally is the case even today, though it is reduced in relative size.
Perhaps my viewpoint is also too detached to see things right -- I can't rule that out -- but my own observation of the political dynamics involved is somewhat different from what you say here; at least in some respects. Or perhaps I should say: I think the focus should be elsewhere. As my response to
@Crom's Black Blade (see above) indicates, I operate on the premise that the populist faction will emerge from one of the major parties (essentially co-opting it). This will happen primarily in a reactionary way, in reponse to the
other party deciding (insofar as parties "decide") to become the
establishment faction. But it's very important to note that this process changes both parties, and that regardless of whether it retains the name-- any "populist party" will
no longer be the Republican party as we've known it before.
A key point may be that the
erosion of the middle class is central to the macro-historical thesis for the 21st century. It is precisely because of this development that populism is ascending and will continue to ascend. So which party represents the middle class is becoming less relevant. The crucial thing is the emergence of a broad faction that unites the "have-nots", the "stand-to-loses" and "once-had-and-feel-betrayeds". This is not a middle class party.
Middle class is a thing that exists in times of relative comfort; its desires -- as far as I can tell -- are to preserve the state of affairs that led to its creation. The middle class is anti-revolutionary, and the fact that there are so many people with still so much to lose is why things presently still continue as they have.
The fact is that due to their own natural core constituencies, both major US parties -- again, as far as I can tell -- have historically had avenues to potentially become populist parties. At present, I no longer see that avenue as accessible to the Democrats, but I don't think you're correct to rule it out as a possibility that was still there 30 to 40 years ago. I do believe (perhaps with the benefit of hindsight) that it was
less likely even then. But I can see where the expectation of the Democrats becoming the Populist faction came from, back then. (Because, again, Populist =/= Republican. Populism may co-opt the GOP, but that's not the same thing, exactly.)
No, it couldn't have, because the Republican party has always been an ill fit with the elitist managerial class. The rise of the Managerial class in the US has always, ALWAYS been a part of the Democrat's efforts and opposed by Republicans, from the inception of the "Modern Government" under Woodrow Wilson, to the massive expansion of the Federal Bureaucracy to "combat" the Great Depression and manage WW2 under FDR, to the explosion of the bureaucracy to manage the welfare state under Johnson, to the rise of Federal centralization of Education under Carter the expansion of the Managerial class is directly tied to the Democrats and their government programs.
The tie between Republicans and Business was mainly due not to Republicans being for the Managerial classes, but because up until the 1990s most businesses were not big enough to gain advantage from allying with the Managerial class and instead saw them as a hostile party. The Republicans worked to keep the Managerial class in check, reducing government regulation and claiming they wanted to do things like abolishing the Department of Education. Between Clinton in the 90s and Obama in the late 00s/early 10s, businesses began to see benefits from allying with the managerial class, using government regulations to choke off competition, and gaining major benefits from being able to offshore to places like China (which the Republicans had generally opposed normalizing relations with until the late 90s when the Libertarian and Neocon wings of the Republicans manage to marginalize the Social Conservatives in matters regarding foreign affairs and trade).
If Macro-historians also paid attention to small things like voting demographics of the managerial class they also would have known this. At no point in the last 100 years have members of the managerial class (academics, government bureaucrats, or journalists) voted majority Republican. You could also see this in the immediate region around Washington DC, where the Democrats have controlled DC, Maryland, and the Virginia counties near Washington DC for DECADES going back well into the middle 20th century.
You can even see this in Perot's runs for President in the 90s. It wasn't the Democrat's candidate whom he drew support away from, but the Republicans. Most analysis of the 1992 Presidential election pretty much conclude Perot cost HW Bush the election and gave it to Clinton. Further the Buchannan wing of the Republicans in that period were primarily concerned with Social Issues, not economic or populist ones, which would mean they'd never make common cause with the Democrats who even then were socially progressive to the point of extremism that people only didn't realize due to the systemic cover the media gave them even back then.
Again, while I broadly agree with the things you say, the implicit assumption here is that Democrats couldn't become the populists because the Republicans have historically been the middle class party. Whereas my point is that populists aren't a middle class faction (in fact, they become... ha...
popular when the middle class is getting screwed and the lower strata are over-flowing).
So I don't disagree with what you say. I just feel that it isn't all that relevant to which party can or could become populist.
If we're talking historical context, I'd point out that William Jennings Bryan was
not a Republican. In fact, there we also see an example of populist redistributionism married to a socio-culturally very conservative mindset. So that kind of thing isn't exactly unprecedented, either.
Populism isn't the sole territory of one party, and neither is it consistent with the traditional core beliefs of
either party. The argument that populism would never properly fit the Democrats is
correct. But it doesn't properly fit the Republicans, either. Because it has made its home within the GOP, there is a tendency among Republicans to now retro-actively reconcile the two (at least to an extent), but that's mostly post facto myth-making: stressing the commonalities, downplaying the differences, while in turn accentuating the ways in which the opposite party is "inherently" anti-populist.
But if populism had made its home in the ranks of the Democrats (and I maintain that it could have), then
they would be stressing the commonalities, and downplaying the ways in which they'd previously been anti-populists, while accentuating how "inherently" anti-populist the GOP had supposedly "always been". And that, too, would be nothing but the construction of a somewhat self-serving narrative, after the fact...
