Thought: any successful left populism nationally will have to embrace modern middlebrow American culture (eg Disney and Guy Fieri) rather than try and regard it as cheap or stupid. There’s a reason the populists of the late 19th century were anti evolution and anti urbanist.

This is also why the products of elite universities & the commanding heights of the nonprofit world will be unable to actually successfully do a program of left populism. To do it well requires to not be of the system itself, and that’s where those of who are its products fail.