Pairing Sanders and Trump indicates just how flexible the term populist has become and poses the question as to whether populist has any useful meaning and if so, what it might be. A good starting point to answer this question would be to trace back to the historical origins of the term. In the early 1890s the People's party—whose members were known by the quirky nickname Populists, or just Pops—represented a powerful movement against corporate power that demanded solutions to the Gilded Age crisis of inequality. By the measure of this historical legacy, Bernie Sanders looks very much like a populist for the "Second Gilded Age," both in his diagnosis of and solutions to society's ills. By the same historical measure, Donald Trump, with his gold-plated jets and mansions, looks very much like the type of plutocrat the Populists held responsible for the injustices and inequities of their time. This suggests that to understand today's headlines about a populist Trump we need a different historical measure and to examine how some contemporary political commentators have separated the term populist from its origins.
Like Sanders, the Populists called for a political revolution—that is, using the electoral process to create a more humane and equitable society. The Populists believed that corporations held undue influence over elections, the halls of government, and the courts. The resulting injustice meant the destruction of the livelihoods of working people and a rendering of society into a nation of "tramps and millionaires." As for solutions, much of the Sanders' campaign webpage reads from the Populist playbook. The Populists proposed electoral reforms to squeeze corruption out of the system and to make government more transparent. They pushed for a progressive income tax to make the wealthy shoulder more of the tax burden. They demanded public control and regulation of banking, railroads, and other key industries. They advocated for government investment and currency expansion to stimulate the economy, create jobs, build infrastructure, and provide relief to debtors. They wanted more public colleges and universities and to have them better serve the needs of working people. The Populists pushed all these issues onto the political agenda more than a century ago—Sanders currently has them at the center of his campaign. And he has even endorsed a Populist classic: turning post offices into banks to make inexpensive and equitable financial services available to those with too little cash to be considered worthy customers by the commercial banks. [2]