As comical as it is to contemplate an Ivy-League-educated law professor and denizen of Hyde Park posing as a pitchfork populist, unlikelier men have have sucessfully played the role. Ted Kennedy, the closest thing American politics has had to Little Lord Fauntleroy, made factories and union halls prime stops on the campaign trail. Al Gore, son of a senator, strangely channelled his inner-Huey Long during his 2000 run for president. Franklin Roosevelt, the Duke of Dutchess County, railed against plutocrats, economic royalists, and other phantoms that more readily resembled the man making such utterances over the radio than the targets of the invective. So, even if Obama strikes an unconvincing populist, precedent shows that one's background is no impediment to successfully masquerading as a populist. What is more befuddling than Obama's reincarnation as Sockless Jerry Simpson is his desire to reincarnate as a populist. It's bad politics. Sure, populists from William Jennings Bryan to Huey Long thrived in tough times. But those were different economies. The 2010 economy is not constituted of farmers or factory workers. Just seven percent of private sector workers are unionized. It's a white collar economy, in which voters dream of being capitalists--not of killing capitalists. Obama is using a playbook made obsolete by the transformation of the game. He is still playing rounders when everyone has moved on to baseball.

Football. We play football now.

"It's a white collar economy, in which voters dream of being capitalists--not of killing capitalists. Obama is using a playbook made obsolete by the transformation of the game. He is still playing rounders when everyone has moved on to baseball."

In what way is our service-sector dominated economy "white collar"? Is a wage slave working in a retail outlet "white collar"? Not everyone is a scrivener working a sedentary job in a cubicle; most are bagging groceries, working in restaurants, working in retail outlets, etc. In most cases their parents contributed as producers and savers in a production economy, with solid prospects for high-paying jobs with good benefits. Those days, thanks to the Reagan revolution, are dead and gone--their children are wage slaves. We are now a consumption- and debt-based economy, with a select few at the top seeing massive income gains relative to productivity and the vast majority seeing their wages stagnate or decline relative to productivity gains. It's shameful of you to gloss over it.

That people dream of some day sitting at their master's table instead of licking the spills and foraging for crumbs underneath that table is unremarkable.

Perhaps the playbook is obsolete in the eyes of a selfish ethical egoist (note to asses: mainstream conservative), but I would imagine if the Obushma administration had acted other than the second coming of the Bush administration that they would be resonating with a great many more voters, and the people of Mass. certainly wouldn't have elected Pantload Brown as their Senator to replace Ted Kennedy.

I really dug this post. I think you are on to something. Populism without authenticity is too easily seen for what it is: pandering.