Political Populism Quotes

Trump might have a populist message that resonates with some voters, but the man doesn't care about any of the people he's appealing to.

In the wake of a Trump victory, the Democratic Party is tacking to the left in an attempt to harness the populist message that put Trump in the White House.

Julius Caesar was an aristocrat who sided with the Roman people. He's not my hero, but he was one of a long line of what we'll call 'populares,' which were popular leaders who tried to institute these reforms that the people were fighting for.

I don't think you can understand Trump's relationship to his voters and how he gets away with what he gets away with, without understanding the pact between a lifestyle brand and its consumer base and how that really transformed the global economy in the 1990s.

History is a series of mistakes. Now the task is to plan for those mistakes so those of us who are populists can actually take over the reins of power when the right mistakes are made.

[Among conservatives] there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people'.... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons.... We...are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants.

Brexit and Trump have brought the problems of capitalism into sharp relief, but both are only making things worse. Take the investment challenge - businesses invest where there they see technological or market opportunity.

The Republicans love alpha-males, and they're sick of the corruption, too. Not that Trump will do anything about it. But at least he's not bought. And he throws in just the right amount of racism to appeal to the Republican base.

All of this is happening because there has still been no reckoning post the financial crisis. So governments have fallen, one bloke has been to prison, the banks have gone pretty well back to status quo, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. And it's fuelling anger. And somehow [Donald] Trump, who represents the worst aspects of capitalism, has persuaded people he can deal with that.

Like Trump's presidential bid, the Brexit campaign has been driven largely by fears of cultural penetration, immigrant invasion, and the genuine crisis of Middle East refugees dying to get into Europe, all channeled into a kind of inward-turning form of ethno-nationalism.

Trump is popular, Trump is big precisely because Republican voters are angry at establishment Republicans. And establishment Republicans keep giving these people reason to be mad by continuing to insult them, and by appearing to agree with Democrats on key issues a majority of Americans disagree with, from amnesty to whatever, economics, Obamacare, take your pick.

The basic thing that made Trump popular is that he blamed others for the problems that we have in the United States. We have a problem. Let's face it. The typical income, median income, of a full-time male worker - and the workers who have a full-time job are the lucky ones - is at the same level it was 42 years ago. At the bottom, real wages in the United States are at the same level they were 60 years ago.

If the euro zone doesn't come up with a comprehensive vision of its own future, you'll have a whole range of nationalist, xenophobic and extreme movements increasing across the European Union. And, frankly, questions about the British debate on EU membership will just be a small sideshow compared to the rise of political populism.

Every campaign, Garry Wills once wrote, "taught Nixon the same lesson: mobilize resentment against those in power." History taught the same to many conservative and reactionary populist movements, whose real attitude to those in power and authority was one of a servile, envious, vicarious adoration.

The George Wallace campaign in 1968 was the model for the Trump campaign in 2016.

The world is experiencing great change, but you've got loads of people terrified of this change and the Donald Trumps, the Boris Johnsons making utterly simplistic, reductionist policy proposals that are unrealistic but then people buy it up.

Limbaugh can rightly be said to be the greatest populist expositor of conservatism in America since Reagan, and the link between the Reagan generation and the so-called Rush Babies.

Italy has piled up huge public debt because the successive governments were too close to the life of ordinary citizens, too willing to please the requests of everybody, thereby acting against the interests of future generations.

What's wrong with politics in the celebrity billionaire analysis is politicians. Populism is not so much a cry for economic equality, or even a disdain for elites, but a mass revulsion against the inauthenticity of politicians. Celebrities are real celebrities, politicians are fake ones.

If someone thinks the course of Italian politics will become anti-European, against an open society, against trade, or populist, as they say today, the facts will prove them wrong.

Young voters may be growing up in an era of increased global connection, cooperation and commerce. But they're very open to politicians who tell them it is these very things that are keeping elites in power and keeping their generation down.

[ Bernie Sanders' popularity] is exactly the same as Donald Trump's.It is a bunch of people who are disaffected with what the establishment has done, and they are striking out. Do they have any clear idea of what they want as an alternative? No. The candidates that they have surrounded themselves with either have no idea or are promising things that are so impractical they will never get done.

The movement that appears to be put together and led by Trump actually existed before Trump came along. The people fed up with the Republican Party, the Tea Party types, the people fed up with the Republican Washington establishment, Democrats included.

Political populism always poses a great danger because it disorients people, creates excessive expectations or, on the contrary, prioritises objectives that are clearly not priorities or are simply impossible to achieve.

Donald Trump was appealing to a lot of people with his populist message.