The Tea Party Dumps Economic Populism: Where are the Progressives?

The Tea Party sprang to life in response to the financial crash that sent our economy into a tailspin. Until recently, it balanced two tendencies: hatred of big government and hatred of Wall Street. The combination (in the form of the bailouts and stimulus programs) provided a perfect target as economic hardship hit millions on Main Street.

But as the Tea Party becomes more structured and holds conventions like the one this past weekend featuring Sarah Palin, you can see its economic populism slipping away. Sure, there will be attacks against Wall Street's privileged, but those are for show, not substance. Increasingly it is all about the bedrock conservative principles: smaller government, fewer taxes and a strong military. Jobs and Wall Street will become secondary issues even though millions of grassroots Tea Partygoers are still motivated deeply by these concerns.

Of course this is terrific news for Wall Street which has just awarded itself $150 billion in record bonuses while more than 28 million Americans are without jobs or forced into part-time work.

You won't hear the Tea Partyites calling for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency or windfall profits taxes on bonuses. Instead they will rant about government interference in the economy and high taxes.

I mean, you can't make this up. Wall Street goes on a gambling spree, wins big, and then crashes the economy. The federal government bails out the elites. Then Wall Street -- still on the government dole -- makes record profits and bonuses. And just when efforts for financial reforms inch forward in Congress, a grassroots movement emerges against government regulation and taxes, including those on Wall Street.

The underlying anger about the crash, the giveaways to Wall Street and the lack of jobs are still there. The means the field is open for a progressive populist movement. But where is it?

There are some progressive financial reform groups pressuring Congress to enact good legislation. There have even been a couple of mobilizations at banker meetings and at Ben Bernanke's house. But overall, progressives have been AWOL when it comes to building a mass-based populist movement or anything close to it. (Except in Oregon: see "Watch out Tea Party, Progressive Anger is Alive and Well" )

Why is that?

Here's what I've heard from progressives: We're too old, too comfortable, too hooked on the Internet, too invested in the stock market, too invested in Obama, too demoralized; that the activists among us are too close to the Democrats, too far from the grassroots, too concentrated on health care reform, too concentrated on global warming, too besieged by other issues like racism, gay and lesbian rights, abortion rights, union survival, and on and on. You'd think that being a progressive activist was a liability rather than a major plus during this upheaval.(con't)