I believe there is a word for this: triangulation. I may be wrong... I am not quite up to speed on Amerikan(*) talking-head lexicon, yet. What I am referring to is the Clintonesque/DLC style (surely not original, but yet most identifiable in recent times) of catering to what we think "the people want", with the twist of hoping that that will help achieve stated (or assumed) goals. Surprising to see a pomo- basher on that side of the fence! ;-)
As someone pointed out elsewhere, the poor, the minorities, the XYZ category are often similar to other groups. The consideration then is not what they want (or what "intellectuals love" -- so much for criticism of "faux populism"), but (a) what is "a good life" and (b) what are the means to that end.
The poor can have a say in defining (a) just as anyone else, and perhaps more so, but it still has to be a universal definition. And (b), how to get there is the question raised in debates such as the above. Without claiming to summarise the words of others, my thoughts: on the one hand there is the sort of hope/argument that the "truth" will set us free (or some variant of it), while on the other there is the (fairly mainstream liberal or libertarian, IMHO) notion that people should get what they want (the underlying model assumes that all costs can be measured and then employed to calculate what economists I believe call "pareto optimality"). There may be little need to convince anyone here that the truth alone is not going to finish the job. And as for the libertarian alternative, I will wait for that grand non-zero-sum equation that (it seems to me) contradicts the first law of thermodynamics i.e., "let them eat cake", as the LBO analysts might say, may be a good cry for "street cred", but needs further rigourous examination/demonstration.
As previously offered, I do not think the sort of radical socialist change (that I believe most of us hope for) is not something we can compute our way to in a deterministic fashion. So, in MBA-speak, tactically it might be a smart idea to not launch one's revolution by appeal to prisons [alone], but strategically its a dead-end to fight reality (as I claim infinitists -- yeah, I just made up that term -- do, i.e., if they are not just being "faux populist").
A few words in anticipation: yes, I am indeed a hypocrite for living the "good life" and being unable to give it up, while suggesting that if this be defined as the "good life" then it's infeasible. But also, a whole bag of arguments are available to question whether this is indeed the "good life" (nobody, for instance, claims that a drug addict is living the good life, on the basis of his inability to give up its pleasures.. or that Bono makes good music because the vast majority of us are unable to rise above enjoying it ;-)).
--ravi
(*) I have been struggling to come up with some label that would differentiate between America and the USA. I have tried "USA", "USers", etc in the past and they don't sound natural, nor do they fit all usages. I am going to play with "Amerika" for a bit, after seeing your use of it.