Robert Reich thinks America is about to explode in a wave of angry populism following the $700 billion Wall St. bailout. Reich writes:

The larger economic outlook is not encouraging. All signs point to the economy worsening, bailout or no bailout. Unemployment will continue to rise. Median earnings will continue to drop, adjusted for inflation. More Americans will lose their health insurance.

The Era of Angry Populism has only just begun. Let’s hope Obama wins, and is able to mobilize the anger into fierce pressure on Congress to get his agenda enacted, as well as reform Wall Street and Washington.

That would certainly be a positive manifestation of popular sentiment in tumultuous times, but I’m unclear how he thinks we get from here to there. We’re here precisely because the leadership of both parties in Washington has identified with and worked on behalf of corporate interests far more than working Americans. Populism is regularly laughed at by DC elites (See: Jim Webb & Jon Tester’s 2006 victories as an example). The most mainstream populism we see in the American political spectrum today is anti-immigrant, pseudo-racist variety provided by Lou Dobbs and the Minute Men.

Reich thinks McCain could play the role of Angry Populist better than Obama, which I suppose is true but only to the extent that McCain is infinitely more practiced at saying whatever is politically advantageous at a given moment than Obama. Were today to call for McCain to become an economic populist, his likely reaction would be, “Hell, why not?” if it wins him votes in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

But angry populism can only be an effective political response to economic and political disenfranchisement of the majority of the American populus if the people articulating it are genuine. Late arrivers need not apply. While that may be evident with imposters like John McCain and Sarah Palin, it’s also why some of our great liberals — Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton — would not do well as populists either.

Reich is onto something in suggesting that the coming populist outpouring could be a useful weapon in Obama’s efforts to enact his legislative agenda. But I don’t think it’s easy to go from Point A to Point B. Again I’m drawn to what I wrote about a few days ago — Huey Long’s Share The Wealth campaign. We can’t wait for someone who isn’t a populist to produce a populist agenda and harness support for it. If a legislative agenda were to be created that articulated the populist sentiments brewing during this crisis, it would best serve a President Obama to have it originate with an outside body who actually was a populist. We just don’t really have that person now on the Left.

What I think is most likely is that an outpouring of populist support will continue to rise across the nation and our political elites of both parties will ignore, miss, or marginalize it. We’ll have a few figures who harness it in circumscribed situations that don’t inform their legislative actions, as Jim Webb did on the bailout vote. Others will embrace populist rhetoric solely in electoral settings, like railing against high gas prices while oil executives pocket record profits, but then never once vote to change things when in office. At the end of the day, I don’t see any manifestation of populism on the Left that makes me optimistic about the prospects of Democrats currently serving at the federal level finding a way to hear and act upon the uprising to come.  Maybe someone like Brian Schweitzer in Montana will find a way to speak to these times, but again, I think even the list of politicians outside of federal office is short.

The opportunity is here for the Democratic Party to give birth to another Paul Wellstone or Huey Long. There is the popular will for their sort of politics. Will one emerge? And will it be someone we already know (Russ Feingold? Donna Edwards? Robert Wexler?) or someone coming from obscurity to speak truth about the state of affairs in the United States of America?