Can there be a Populist candidate in a major Election?

Seems like Populism should be kicking Bush's ass. WE the People are not the Haves and the Have Mores. We are working more, earning less, paying more for EVERYTHING. Our children's education is getting left behind and the *ahem* American Dream is a faded memory. All of this is fertile fodder for us unwashed masses to be abandoning Bush** in droves.

But, when every candidate running for anything is a millionaire, it really takes the wind out of the Populist sails.

What national level voices out there can preach Populism?

Thoughts?

and the American public has been brainwashed to believe that all socialism is bad, particularly since the Reagan years.


Rev. Al Sharpton was the closest thing to a populist in the last election. John Edwards has a bit of a populist spin to his message in my opinion, but again, another millionaire lawyer.

The bottom line is, it will probably take a wholesale crisis, such as another Great Depression to set this country back in that direction. I really believe it will happen in my lifetime, say within the next 20-30 years.

to win, but you have had some, like William Jennigs Bryan and Huey Long for starters.

I think he is a "cloaked" populist. He comes out of a military tradition where people look out for each other, where there aren't huge gaps in pay between those on top and those on the bottom, where people understand the concept of having to make sacrifices, like relocating the family a dozen times or more in twenty years for one's job. Clark made middle class wages for most of his professional life, he had to fix his own car because he couldn't afford the mechanics bill. There was no money in Clark's family background either.

But because Clark was a military man, he comes across as more as a patriotic public servant than a populist to most who do not know him well.

That certainly puts him on solid ground econonmically w/ most of America.