Is This an Age of Populism?

Whoever wins the nominations, the most successful campaigns of 2016 provide us with a clear picture of where the center of gravity is today in both parties and, hence, where America is going.

Bernie Sanders, with his mammoth crowds and mass support among the young, represents, as did George McGovern in 1972, despite his defeat, the future of the Democratic Party.

That Hillary Clinton has been tacking left tells you Sanders is winning the argument. Should she avoid indictment in the email scandal, and win the nomination and the election, Clinton would be a placeholder president.

Yet, should Sanders win the nomination and election — highly improbable — he would become a frustrated and a failed president.

Why? Consider what he has on offer.

Today, the Republican leadership faces another insurrection. Either it will find a way to accommodate this rebellion, which is not going away after 2016, or it will find itself suffering the fate of the Rockefellers and Romneys, the establishment leaders of the 1960s.

While Sanders is an ideologue who has been on the far left of the political spectrum all his life, instinct, more than ideology, explains Trump. His success comes of having seen, felt and given voice to the broad anger of Middle America.

The old GOP agenda — roll back the Great Society, reduce the size of government, cut capital gains taxes, reduce marginal tax rates, balance the budget — this is not the red meat of the Trump rallies.

Populism, patriotism, nationalism, defying political correctness and dissing the establishment and the elites that monitor PC are where it’s at. And there are reasons for such populist rage.

Put bluntly, the nation seems almost everywhere on an unsustainable path. Mass immigration, legal and illegal, continues to alter the face of America. Obama doubled the debt, and the deficits are rising again.

Abroad, we are apparently going to keep troops in Afghanistan for generations, send more to Iraq and Syria, bring down Assad but keep ISIS and al-Qaida out of Damascus, confront Beijing over the Spratley and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, build up U.S. forces in the Baltic states and Poland, send weapons to Ukraine, sanction Vladimir Putin for Crimea, repudiate the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions — all to be done while our NATO, Arab and Asian allies helpfully hold our coat.

The next president, be it Trump, Cruz, Clinton or Sanders, either will be the last president of an old era, or the first president of a new era.

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