That same month, Barack Obama experienced what was once regarded as the best weekend of any politician in living memory. This anger may be justified or irrational organic or ginned-up economic, racial, cultural, or regional but without palpable anger and resentment, most observers would probably choose different terminology.” “First and foremost,” I noted, “contemporary use of the term assumes there is anger somewhere in the room. Given the wide variety of political figures and movements labeled “populist” at one time or another in American history, the term functions more as a diagnosis than as a description. “From its first appearance in the political vernacular, ‘populist’ has been an adjective expressing an attitude-a popular anger against elites perceived as distant from and antagonistic to the struggles of ordinary Americans-more than delineating a coherent set of political beliefs,” I wrote.Īn 1896 political cartoon depicting Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan as a snake swallowing the Democratic Party. At the time, I expressed skepticism that the term “populist” represented an effective analytic category, at least on the basis of policy. In 2011, I penned an article for this publication on the subject of populism in American politics.