On Feb 6, 2008, at 5:33 PM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote:
> By the time that Bryan ran for president in 1896, the
> populist movement had largely been absorbed into the
> DP, that graveyard of radical movements. Before then,
> the Populist Party had been one of the most successful
> third parties in US history, sweeping local and state
> elections through the farm belt states.
Yeah, but it never caught on with the urban working class. Raise food prices! That's a winning stance.
Why is the DP the graveyard of radical political movements? Could it be that once such movements try to get beyond their initial ideological or regional base and break onto the national scene, they just can't make the transition? Is that really the fault of the DP, or of trying to make radical politics broadly popular in a rather conservative country?
Doug