Populism

Populism is a political frame, not an ideology — it can be filled with left content (anti-corporate, pro-labor), right content (anti-cultural-elite, anti-immigration), or cross-ideological content (anti-monopoly, anti-rent-seeking). What makes a movement populist is not its policy bundle but its structural claim about *who has power and who does not*.

Thin Gold uses "populism" in the structural sense: politics that names concentrated economic power as the problem and proposes to disperse it. This is closer to the 1890s usage (Bryan, the Populist Party, free silver vs. the gold standard) than to the cultural-grievance variant that came later. The 2026 midterms are the publication's most legible test of whether that frame can produce a durable coalition that neither major party currently owns.