Obama is not a Populist, that is not in his personality and he does not need that, what he needs is a rich language of national purpose and shared commitment—including shared sacrifice. He is a great orator and a man of eloquence and best gifted for a language of rationality and intelligence

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Mark Schmitt in "The New Republic" tells us why Obama has never been a populist and will never be a populist.

Mark Schmitt says :

"The point of conflict is not between the people and the powerful, but between the vast majority of us and a small, extremist faction that doesn’t have the economy or the country’s best interests at heart. That language, which will sound a lot more like the unifying Obama of 2008 through 2010, may be called many things, but populist shouldn’t be one of them."

And I can add that Obama being such and Intellectual, professor and scholar is going to continue his 2008 campaign idea of being bipartisan and unifying, Obama is not a bigot or user of prejudice like many of his political rivals.

The New Republic

You Call This Populism? The New Obama Is the Same as the Old Obama.

September 22, 2011

By Mark Schmitt
Mark Schmitt is a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and former editor of The American Prospect.


You Call This Populism? The New Obama Is the Same as the Old Obama.


Some excerpts :

And that may be the cause of the slight shift in Obama’s language as well. We’ve probably moved out of the zone where Obama or Congress is going to get much done. Maybe a little bit of Obama’s jobs bill can pass, but not enough to turn around the economy, unfortunately. It’s also increasingly likely that the “supercommittee” tasked with more budget cuts, to whom Obama’s proposal was addressed, won’t amount to anything, joining dozens of long-forgotten budget gimmicks and commissions before it. The time for “putting points on the board,” as Rahm Emanuel described legislative accomplishments, is over; the time for drawing the lines of conflict for the 2012 election has begun. (Perhaps too late.) And as Strickland shows, populism works better when you’re not trying to govern than when you are.

Still, Obama faces a dilemma: His electoral coalition in 2008 had a barbell shape—he did well with those earning less than $50,000 and with people earning more than $200,000, and better than previous Democrats among people earning more than $100,000. Where he struggled was with people in the $50,000-$75,000 range, those near or just above the median income, where the recession and housing crises have had appreciable impact. That’s a gap he has to repair, that’s where the greatest anger is, and populist rhetoric might help. But he can’t afford to lose the better-off voters (not donors, just upper-middle-class voters) who were part of the original coalition.

To finesse that, he needs not real populism, which isn’t in his blood, but a rich language of national purpose and shared commitment—including shared sacrifice. The point of conflict is not between the people and the powerful, but between the vast majority of us and a small, extremist faction that doesn’t have the economy or the country’s best interests at heart. That language, which will sound a lot more like the unifying Obama of 2008 through 2010, may be called many things, but populist shouldn’t be one of them.

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