My students, who have no sense of even Johnstonian left-populism, much less Domhoffian left-Weberianism, before encountering them in my classes, simultaneously think 1) "there oughta be a law" whenever they see structural inequalies populistically-defined, 2) government is not, and social movements are not, the solution (secular humanists, evolutionists, feminazis, ecoterrorists and homosexual predators, good god, no!) , 3) the government is controlled by and in bed with the powerful, 4) the government should get out of entrepreneurial business-folk's way, 5) when there are problems it is usually the citizens fault for being ignorant or not fighting back or local officials' fault for not understanding or defending the real interests of their constituencies AND 6) corporations and banks act in a way that does not serve the interests of real Americans.
It makes no sense because it is a mixture of leftish and rightish populism, a mode of thought that is fundamentally reactive and possesses no theoretical content, much less historical and comparative analysis.
There might be electoral punishments and rewards for opponents/proponents of regulations if candidates weren't vetted by party machines and primaries and, if elected, subsequently further constrained by everything from seniority to institutional momentum, gridlock and lobbyists. So many of my political students have yet to see a candidate on a ballot - beyond Obama, who they clearly misunderstood - that they believe reflects their populist sensibilities... so many who might seek to engage in electoral punishment or rewards see little or not point in voting since there's no candidate that'd express that desire for punishment or reward. Again, as you note, they're not stupid even if they have no idea about and not much interest in theoretically informed structural critiques and movement politics.
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 7:51 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> So if the masses really love specific regulations, why is there almost no
> political evidence of that? Yeah, the elite really constrains democracy, but
> the system isn't totally closed. You'd think there might be some electoral
> punishments for opponents of reg and rewards for proponents. I don't see
> any.
>
> Sometimes I think that many on the left see the masses as some radical
> sleeping giant just waiting for an alarm to ring. They aren't, you know.
>
> Doug
>
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