About Trump and "populism"

It's all a bit complicated, but this Vox article that talks about culture, economics, Trump and populism is worth reading.  Here's one section:

Sean Illing

As you know, there are dueling theses about what's really behind the Trump phenomenon: It’s either about economic insecurity or it’s a cultural backlash among older, whiter Americans. You seem firmly in the latter camp.

Pippa Norris

That's right, and the solutions are very different depending on how you interpret what happened. If it's economics, you can go along with the Bernie Sanders solution. You can think of job apprenticeships, such as we've had in Germany, to make sure that blue-collar workers have the skills they need, building up community colleges, improving the minimum wage. You can think about economic redistribution. Parties like Labour under Jeremy Corbyn have certainly adopted those policies in a way to try to get back to the electorate and build up their support, but it basically hasn't worked.

On the other hand, if it's cultural factors, then there's a much deeper problem. It's a problem for liberals in particular. Many of the leaders and members of parties who are active on the left are actually part of the progressive left. They’re well-educated and won't go back on issues like gender equality or issues of race and racism or Islamophobia. So they’re limited in terms of how they can respond to this cultural backlash.

On some of the basic values which Trump's supporters and authoritarians believe, they're not going to reverse. They're not going to simply abandon all evidence-based policy, the emphasis on education and expanding college education or emphasis on gender equality, women's rights or social tolerance in the broadest sense for social diversity because that's built into their DNA.

So progressive forces leading social democratic parties can try to build their support back and they can do some things, but it's much easier for parties on the right to adopt some of the similar language.

Hmmm.   I would say that, more correctly, it's a short term problem for liberals.   Because the older folk pining for the old days will be dying out, literally, sooner or later.

But on the economics side, I guess it is a problem for liberals, on the matter of how to address properly the issues with globalisation (and technological advance) not working that well for a section of the formerly employed.