Can the Democrats Reclaim Economic Populism?

[Passages]

That challenge is key to winning back voters who deserted the Harris-Walz ticket in 2024. Some rank-and-file members are calling for something new.

by Robert Kuttner, David Dayen
April 1, 2025

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, usually more of a liberal than a radical, declared last weekend that the Democratic Party is “a pretty broken brand right now,” and suggested that the only cure was full-throated economic populism as the “tentpole.” Speaking in an interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Murphy added that the whole party needed to sound more like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

A majority of voters agree that the Democrats are a broken brand. Recent polling shows that just 27 percent of voters polled have a favorable view of Democrats, a record low. Murphy, like Warren, Sanders, and AOC, contends that economic populism is the one theme that can both shame Trump and his billionaire allies and also bridge over the party’s other internal differences. He is worth quoting at length on this point:

SNIP
BUT FILLING THE LEADERSHIP VACUUM doesn’t end there. Last week, in a remarkable series of speeches on the House floor, a group of rank-and-file Democrats from different parts of the ideological spectrum challenged the party establishment to embrace economic populism, rather than begging for donations from the rich and participating in the corruption.

Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) of the Pittsburgh area helped coordinate the speeches. He represents a working-class sliver of Beaver County, a Trump-friendly area that he won by significantly more than Harris. “This administration is wreaking havoc on this country of ours, and our party has not offered a strong enough alternative,” he said in his speech. “The era of a spineless Democratic Party must end. We have to go to the mat for an economy that works for people who work hard and play by the rules.”
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-04-01-can-democrats-reclaim-economic-populism/


We absolutely can do this and we must.