“We Changed the Market Structure That Was F****** Them Over”: The New Populist Forum and the Fight Against Neoliberalism

“Populism does not seek a liberal solution,” argued Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, at a May 1986 panel hosted by the New Populist Forum that featured him and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin alongside the Reagan Administration’s Undersecretary of the Treasury Richard Darman and Georgia Republican congressman Newt Gingrich. Following a Gingrich claim that Democratic Party populism would fail because “the values of their liberal elite allies collide with the values of most Americans,” Hightower fired back that “Gingrich does a good job of bashing liberals and bureaucrats, but that ain’t what we are.”

Self-described “progressive populists” on the Democratic Party’s left like Hightower, Harkin, and 1988 presidential candidate Jesse Jackson faced this difficult two-step: differentiating themselves from both the fakir populism of conservative demagogues like Gingrich and challenging the centrist drift of the Democratic Party in response to the gains of the Reagan Revolution. Hightower and Harkin, along with Illinois congressman Lane Evans, founded the New Populist Forum in 1985, a venue for policy and electoral strategizing among the Harkin- and Evans-led Congressional Populist Caucus, progressive training organization Midwest Academy, and activist coordinating group Citizen Action. Blending policy and organizing in the meetings and writings of the New Populist Forum, these progressive populists built a credible progressive alternative to the neoliberal approach of the Democratic Leadership Council.