The MAGA coalition is fracturing under the impact of Trump’s betrayals. As “right populism” goes into crisis, its mirror opposite is rearing its head.

Last month, a relatively unknown Texas state representative, James Talarico, beat a well known Congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary for the US Senate. Talarico’s campaign website casts him as a working-class fighter against the rich:

James is an eighth-generation Texan, former middle school teacher, and Presbyterian seminarian. As a state representative, he’s led the fight against the billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians who have taken over Texas. Now, he’s running for US Senate to take his fight against corruption to Washington and win power back for working people.

Meanwhile, in Maine, an oyster farmer with no background in politics, Graham Platner, is leading the polls for the US Senate against the sitting Governor Janet Mills. According to Platner, “we have a government by, of and for billionaires, who are building a ‘billionaire economy’ that none of us can afford.” If he wins, polls suggest he could force incumbent Senator Susan Collins into retirement.

Both candidates have combined their message on the cost of living crisis with attacks on the billionaires who have amassed unheard-of levels of wealth.

Other candidates are running similar campaigns, such as Dan Osborn in the Nebraska Senate race and Allison Ziogas who is running for Congress from Staten Island.

Even former US Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio, who established a reputation as a populist advocate for blue collar workers, is running again for his old job. His campaign website says: “Sherrod believes too many people think of politics as left or right, but to him it’s all about whose side you’re on, and who you are fighting for.”

A changing political landscape

The rise of “left populism”—and the election of Democrats like Zohran Mamdani who identify as “Democratic Socialists”—is a change from the days before Bernie Sanders first ran in 2016. Up until then, the Democrats mostly ran traditional liberals on run-of-the-mill platforms devoid of class conflict undertones.

This shift is a sign of the times. The rise of Trumpism over the past decade was a distorted reflection of growing class anger seeking an outlet. As Senator Chris Murphy—another Democrat pushing in a populist direction—wrote on X after the election: “We came to be the party of the Establishment, and people were able to look past Trump’s rough edges because he seemed, to them, like somebody who would fuck up the whole system.”

Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington, tear down the establishment, stop the endless wars abroad, and fix the problems here at home. Above all, in 2024, he acknowledged the economic pain of inflation that plagued Biden’s term, and promised to usher in a “golden age” of prosperity.

Not only has Trump not made good on these promises—he has delivered the complete opposite. His unprovoked attacks on Venezuela and Iran, his U-turn on the Epstein files, and the worsening state of the economy, have disappointed his supporters.

As MAGA fractures, some are gravitating toward figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson. Some are moving further to the right of Trumpism. An obscure Florida gubernatorial candidate, James Fishback, is running a campaign aligned with the politics of white supremacist Nick Fuentes. He combines anti-immigration, antisemitism, and “Christian nationalism,” with Mamdani-style “affordability” rhetoric, and opposition to Trump’s war in Iran.

This is a warning that polarization always has two poles. If “the left” fails to step into the political vacuum, it can create space for uglier variants of far-right demagogy.

Why is populism on the rise?

The sources of anger fueling populism are no mystery. Working-class misery is increasing daily. The cost of housing, food, and transportation are spiking, while 60% believe life in the US is getting worse.

Average household health insurance premiums are at $27,000, while the median family income is less than $84,000. In other words, millions of working families are spending a third of their income on healthcare. This explains why a third of the population, about 82 million people, report skipping meals or driving less to pay for healthcare. Around 16% put off surgery or medical treatment because they cannot afford it.

While workers get squeezed, they see the rich multiplying their fortunes. The top 1% control $55.8 trillion in assets. By comparison, the entire US GDP only hit $30 trillion last year.

Under these conditions, workers look for an alternative, but the labor leaders continue their policy of supporting traditional politicians, especially the Democrats. As a result, working-class outrage finds no mass outlet.

Within the narrow limits of America’s capitalist “duopoly,” opposition to Trump 2.0 will partly express itself as a vote for the Democrats. Primary races in particular are likely to favor candidates who come out swinging against elites in Washington and on Wall Street.

Class roots of the original “populists”

The term “populism” is often interpreted as a generic label for “anti-establishment” or “anti-elite” politics. There’s more to it than that. In reality, populism has a long history in this country.

The heyday of American populism was in the 1880s and early 1890s, when it took the form of an independent People’s Party. Its high point was the presidential election of 1892, when the Populist candidate James Weaver won nearly 9% of the popular vote, and 22 electoral college votes from six states. Populists also won several seats in Congress, three governor races, and hundreds of local and state legislature seats.

Every real political movement is an expression of the interests of a specific class or another. Populism voiced the protest of small farmers whose livelihoods were being destroyed by the advancing industrial revolution. Their early efforts to organize took the form of Farmers’ Alliances which sprang up across the Midwest and South demanding debt relief and cheaper loans to stave off bankruptcy.

In 1892, the Farmers’ Alliance convention dissolved into the new People’s Party. They attempted to rally working-class support behind a program of agrarian demands. The final speaker in the convention declared that “the interests of rural and urban labor are the same; their enemies are identical.”

The raging class struggles and economic crises of the time provided fertile ground for a new party. The Panic of 1873, known at the time as “the Great Depression” was the worst slump in the history of US capitalism, until it was surpassed by the depth of the Panic of 1893. That was followed by the Panic of 1896.

While the masses suffered the consequences of each ensuing panic, the robber barons of the railroads and other industrial monopolists of the Gilded Age lived like royalty.

In this context, the populist movement was a response to the class struggle—but not from a working-class standpoint. Rather, it was an attempt of the declining petty bourgeois to present itself as “the people” and to recruit workers to its cause.

Confusion and decline

The eclectic mix of demands in the populist program reflected this cross-class coalition. Demands for a shorter workweek and nationalization of the railroads and telegraphs were combined with confused or reactionary demands for immigration controls, tariffs, and printing more money. Many opposed the gold standard, a rallying cry of the earlier “Greenback Party” from the 1870s. They blamed monetary policy for their debt woes, instead of the capitalist market and the crushing competition from the largest landowners.

In short, populism attempted to appeal to the masses against the wealthy—not by challenging capitalism itself, but by proposing various reforms and gimmicks, which it claimed would solve the problems facing the population.

It also reflected the political immaturity of the early labor movement, which was not yet standing on its own feet as an independent force. In attendance at the founding of the Populist Party were two of America’s early labor leaders, Terrence Powderly of the Knights of Labor, and future socialist Eugene Debs, who was still evolving politically.

Debs was elected to the Indiana state legislature as a Democrat in 1884. He went on to organize the wildcat Pullman Strike of 1894; became a convinced socialist in 1897; formed the Socialist Party in 1901; and finally, a staunch supporter of Bolshevism in 1917.

For its part, the populist movement collapsed suddenly after the 1896 election. Mired in confusion over its platform, the party decided to nominate the Democratic candidate, rather than running its own. It never regained the lost momentum.

Populism’s dead end

In the meantime, the class composition of the US continued to change as industry progressed. In 1880, a majority of the labor force worked in agriculture, with around 75% of land cultivated in small plots directly by its owners. Thirty years later, less than a third of the workforce was in agriculture, with a little over half of those operating as family farms. This was combined with an enormous growth of the working class, particularly in urban areas and mining regions.

The rise of American socialist politics at the turn of the century signaled the changed balance of class forces, and the arrival of an overwhelming working-class majority. This should have put an end to populism for good.

Today, 160 million work in various industries, while only 2.2 million work in agriculture, and only 747,000 of these are self-employed. The class basis for populism disappeared long ago. Yet it’s coming back—on a decidedly lower level—as a current within each of the two ruling capitalist parties.

The revival today of a movement from the 19th century is a damning indictment of the leadership of the working class, and its failure to break with the parties and outlook of the enemy class. As a result, the fight against the billionaires is getting cheap lip service—within the two parties controlled by those very billionaires.

The track record of 21st century “populism” in office is telling. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, started out as a Sanders style populist in 2018. Now he’s a right-winger and a favorite guest of Fox News shows. Mamdani could have broken with the Democrats and mobilized his base in a mass struggle to win his affordability agenda. Instead he’s governing like a traditional liberal mayor.

If you play by the rules of bourgeois politics, you end up serving the interests of capitalism. The challenge of our time is to achieve the political independence of our class. When the labor movement stands on its own feet, free from the grip of the ruling-class parties, its true strength will become apparent.