Populist Reform of the Democratic Party

Bernie wants to get for people what he's convinced they should want.

Hillary wants to figure out what people want and then help them get it.

Two different styles of populism.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/hillary-the-populist/400376/

If Sanders is a rhetorical populist, then Clinton is one in a different, and more literal sense: She actually tries to cater to the majority of likely voters. The Clintons have a reputation for obsessing over the public mood, with Bill catching blowback during his presidency for relying “too much on constant temperature-taking, even scripting his message—right down to his actual words—to polling and focus groups.” That reputation has followed Hillary. Reason recently classified her as a “Focus Group Democrat,” and it isn’t hard to find comments on articles accusing her of believing “what the polls and focus groups tell her to believe.”


But isn’t this barometric sensitivity just a sophisticated method for responding to the largest possible coalition of voters? It’s a coldly efficient way of giving the people what they want, calculated to upset as few as possible.

Politicians aiming for the center mass of public opinion aren’t a recent development in Anglo American politics. The 19th-century British journalist Walter Bagehot fawned over conservative Prime Minister Robert Peel’s ability to do just that: “From a certain peculiarity of intellect and fortune, he was never in advance of his time. Of almost all the great measures with which his name is associated, he attained great eminence as an opponent before he attained even greater eminence as their advocate.”

SNIP

Hillary Clinton, like Peel, is no prophet raging in advance of a cause. Instead, both politicians pursued synchronicity with the demands of the electorate, never outpacing the collective moral imagination with their own desires, and reframing compromise as virtuous inclusion.