> The corporate rightwing has spent a lot of good dollars instilling that
> distrust and you sometimes think the incompetence of the Bush Administration
> in Iraq and in the Katrina response is designed to reinforce it.
>
> But there is a reality that there is broad support for a fairer, more
> equitable health care system, for raising taxes on the wealthy, and for
> raising wages of those at the bottom. That's a pretty decent populist
> instinct to work with out there. The tough part is not convincing people
> of the end goal but that the policy promised won't end up as a clusterfuck
> (oh yeah, Medicare Part D, another GOP plot to demonstrate the incompetence
> of government.)
You realy don't need right-wing dollars to generate distrust in the government and its programs. Public distrust of the U.S. government and its institutions has been high for years. What's odd is that there are both liberals and Dittoheads who still love the government. Go figure.
I'm relishing the current anti-government mood in the United States. This is a welcome phenomenon and something to be encouraged. People should hate governments. We need to get rid of the damn things and replace them with a system that is based on human needs, not corporate greed or power for a small group of people. This is why I'm an anarchist.
Of course, a left populist program could harness that widespread dislike of government and speak to issues that people care about. Thomas Frank's analysis of the conservative backlash machine is on target, but the Democrats can never fight back because they aren't populists. The only way for the Democrats to retake power is to become populists, which they can't do because they are entrenched anti-statists.
As I said before, I relish this situation and see large opportunities for anarchists and the libertarian left.
Chuck