Populism abandonded

An argument could be made that Washington had been captured by lobbyists and wealthy donors and  was not longer sufficiently responsive to voters. That sentiment fuelled the surge in populist rhetoric in the last election; it is what connected Trump voted to Bernie's supporters. "Drain the swamp" they chanted.

But as Fareed Zakaria points out, very little of Trump's populist promises have been fulfilled, nor are they likely to be. The wall won't be built as promised, and certainly won't be paid for by Mexico. A big infrastructure initiative looks very different from advertised. Jobs aren't coming back to coal, and outsourcing continues apace (even at Carrier, the HVAC company).      

Trump has spent much of his campaign and presidency undermining the institutions of civil society - and in reneging on his populist agenda he will have demolished a possible avenue by which government might have been reformed to answer to voters rather than moneyed interest groups. Populism as an idea has now been discredited as just another ploy to grab the levers of power, and then abandoned as quickly as it was embraced.

Globalization over promised and, over 30 years, has come to be viewed as having benefited the elites while betraying the aspirations of the majority. Education, particularly higher ed. is suffering a similar fate. And a populist-driven reconstruction of the institutions of democratic government has gone the same way, to be consigned to the dustbin of historical inevitability.