Populism need not be Right Wing. Dems can ride the wave, or be drowned by it.

[Tom Rinaldo]

I can still remember it vividly, the debates we were embroiled in during the 2016 primaries. Some hard feelings may still linger for some, but there's nothing to be gained by nursing them, in either direction. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination. She is a fine woman and I am confident she would have made an excellent President. Bernie Sanders is a fine man and I am confident he would have made an excellent President. America, by an extremely narrow margin (in the Electoral College) made a hard right populist turn in 2016 when Trump became President. Had Bernie Sanders won the Democratic nomination that year, and had he then been elected, America instead would have made a hard left populist turn.

Maybe America wasn't ready for a left populist President in 2016. We will never know for sure. But what still stands out for me in hindsight is this: As the primaries ran their course that year, there were two candidates spanning the political spectrum who continually drew massive crowds to their campaign rallies; Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Of course mention was made in the media of the phenomena at the time, but only one of those men routinely had their rallies telecast live, virtually in full, that of course being Trump. Conventional wisdom at the time held that these men drew their mass support from different reservoirs of followers: those on the right vs those on the left, and never the twain shall meet. Except that there was ample evidence that the twain, far more often than most pundits were prepared to admit, did in fact meet.

I remember how routinely that observation was scoffed at then. Bernie Sanders, it was argued by many at the time, would not appeal to the kind of people who were being drawn to Donald Trump. A Bernie voter in the primaries, it was asserted, wouldn't then turn around and vote for Trump in the General, or vice versa.. And of course that was true in many cases, among those with strong partisan and/or ideological leanings. But how much of the electorate actually has strong partisan and/or ideological leaning at a time when registered Independents outnumber either registered Democrats or Republicans? The growing divide in America is not between left and right, it is between those who are relatively comfortable with the status quo and those who feel betrayed by it, whatever their often superficial political identification might happen to be.

The political battle line in America is increasingly defined by the question, who constitutes the elites in America? It it an expanding oligarchy of hyper wealthy increasingly powerful billionaires and their operatives who feather their own nests, or is it so called coastal cultural snobs in Hollywood and liberal universities who try to impose their radical values on everyday regular Americans? Either way, an increasing majority of Americans have come to believe that their opinions, that their needs and aspirations, simply don't matter to those who seemingly run this nation. They may use different labels to describe it, but they all believe that "the Establishment" in America doesn't give a flying f*ck about them. Hence the rise in Populism.

That's the wave that is sweeping our nation.The exploding Epstein scandal casts a spotlight on the fault lines, who can be trusted to protect ordinary Americans from the elites? Politicians on both sides can either catch the wave or be drowned by it.