The End of the Populist Style
Populism won many of its battles and exhausted its act. What's emerging next is a new constructivism.
I’ve been fortunate to have early insight into a number of cultural shifts. In 2013 I saw the manosphere coming. In 2014, I saw the change in culture’s view of Christianity that became the basis of my “three worlds” model. In 2015, I saw Donald Trump coming.
For the last few years, however, I haven’t had a strong sense of where the country is going next. We’ve been in a liminal period, a period of transition. That’s in two senses. The first is the bigger, longer arc I’ve labeled the “American Transition,” in which the country is shifting from one institutional order to another yet to be defined. The other sense is about the shorter term cultural, political, and religious moment. In this liminal moment, it hasn’t been clear what’s coming next.
But now, I’m getting a sense of where things are headed. Though it still has some time to play out, it looks to me like the populist moment is coming to an end in America. In its place we’ll likely see multiple things, but one is what I call a “new constructivism,” one that is already present and growing.
The Decline of the Populist Style
When I say populism, I’m referring to three things, a style, a movement, and a program. The populist style is highly combative, very confrontational, hostile to elites and institutions, typically anti-intellectual, abrasive, often transgressive of established norms and ideas, and often with a revolutionary affect. A populist movement, in the mass media age, weds this style to a reciprocal bond of personal affection and loyalty between a popular mass and a charismatic, often outsider political leader. A populist program typically involves policies designed to benefit the popular classes or satisfy their preferences, usually at the expense of the interests of the powerful, wealthy, or big institutional incumbents. 19th century populists wanted free silver. Trumpian populists want America First.
I believe the populist style, in particular, is going to be fading soon, along with the populist movement. I expect the movement to be played out by 2030, and the style even sooner. Though in part this is because the populist program has succeeded in many areas. Why do I say this this?
First, high-intensity social movements always die out because people can only sustain a fever pitch for so long. Populism in particular has always burned itself out. The 60s social revolutions and campus protests, 70s left wing terrorism, etc. also faded. The Covid craziness faded. The populist style is no longer fresh, cool, or edgy. It’s gotten stale and is less entertaining. People are doing normal things again, like watching the NFL - whose ratings bottomed out early in the Trump era but have fully recovered - or seeing The Odyssey.
This loss of the entertainment factor has caused populist influencers to shift in more extreme and sometimes bizarre directions. Populism is losing coherence and fading in the online right. I know a number of people in various parts of the populist online right world. Many of them are disenchanted with its current state and want to find a way out.
But even just looking at public information, we can see people like Candace Owens, who previously worked for multiple legitimate conservative organizations, go completely off the rails. She’s not the only one. Conspiracy theories abound and are a staple of today’s online right discourse. There have also been a number of scandals involving online right influencers saying things in return for undisclosed payments.
It’s gotten to the point that online right influencers themselves are complaining about it. The dissident right writer Scott Greer is an example of this. He coined the term “insane clown party” to describe what’s happened, and recently inveighed against the GOP’s “freak streak” in the American Conservative.
There’s still a market for this style. But that style is increasingly unmoored from any populist political movement. And it’s clear that it only appeals to a minority of the country.
Second, the populist style has already persisted longer than it otherwise would have because of the unique skills and success of Donald Trump. Early 90s populism, fueled by similar issues, faded much faster. Donald Trump was a far more talented vehicle than either Pat Buchanan or H. Ross Perot - and he won. That Trump’s two terms were non-consecutive has extended his timespan of influence.
Trump is a world-historical figure. He is the indispensable man for this era of right populism, the charismatic leader that made it a movement. After his departure following the 2028 election, no one can plausibly fill his role. Look at would-be successor JD Vance, for example. Vance is in full apology mode over a statement he made about “childless cat ladies.” Trump would never have apologized for that. In fact, he said much worse about women, and managed to deflect criticism by saying, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” It isn’t just Vance who can’t pull off what Trump does routinely. No one else can either. We will probably never see Trump’s like again. Trump’s departure will drain the energy from populism as a style and movement, and remove the protective umbrella that has allowed people in his orbit to get away with imitating his style. Neither Trump’s talent nor his personal bond with his supporters is transferable to a successor.
Third, populism succeeded in mainstreaming its ideas, making the populist style itself redundant. If populism as a style and as a movement is fading, in part that’s because populism as a program has succeeded. It can be difficult to remember how constrained the Overton Window was in a year like 2014. And how many now-commonplace ideas were relegated to the fringes of the internet. Some type of large illegal immigration amnesty was the bipartisan elite consensus. Questioning the role of trade with China in displacing American workers was ridiculed by economists. No one was talking about intersexual dynamics in close to the manner that the manosphere did.
Today, the GOP seems to have largely admitted that war was a mistake. The China Shock paper in 2016 forced the economics profession to re-evaluate the effect of Chinese trade. Now, everyone in America understands that China is a competitor and a major challenge for the country. That won’t change when Trump is out of office. It may be his most durable legacy. The bipartisan CHIPS Act is starting to reshore semiconductor manufacturing, and other initiatives like securing critical mineral supplies are in progress. Center-left policy entrepreneurs like Richard Reeves are now talking about the problems of boys and men. Words like “hypergamy” are now in the mainstream media.
In short, on a host of issues, populism won, either in having its issues adopted, as with China skepticism, or at least in breaking the embargo on its ideas.
That’s a problem for the populists, because they are no longer needed to carry the torch for these issues in the way they used to, and they haven’t developed new ones to replace them. On new and emerging topics like AI, populism is active as a negative force, but has no alternative vision it is supporting. There’s no “America First” or “Make America Great Again” for AI, merely standard-issue NIMBY opposition to data centers. The march of history means that America is starting to move on from the issues that animated populism towards a new set of issues that will be less aligned with the populist style, or at least right-populism of the variety we’ve experienced.
Populism not only succeeded with its ideas, but also with disrupting institutions. A great example is in the evangelical world. The religious establishment there known as “Big Eva” has been a longtime target of populist attacks. It still is. But today, Big Eva can barely be said to exist. Its dominant figures are almost entirely gone, lost to either scandal, death, or retirement. Its institutions are shells of what they used to be, and wield nothing like the power and influence they once did.
The question now is how to renew America’s institutions or what to build in their place. This is where populism does not have an answer. It’s a mode of critique, not of construction. Now that needed disruption is accomplished, the public will rapidly become disenchanted with populism’s ability to take the next needed steps.
Indeed, the inability of today’s populism to actually deliver the goods after accomplishing disruption is part of why the public is souring on it. A different mode of engagement is required to carry the project forward.
For all these reasons the populist style seems likely to fade. Indeed, the disenchantment with populism is already evident in many things we see. The question is then what comes after it.
The Rise of the New Constructivism
What arises in place of the populist style is yet to be determined, and probably won’t be a single thing. But I’m seeing signs of a new style I call the “new constructivism.” It’s people trying to think seriously about reform and new ideas needed to actually address America’s challenges.
Fifteen years ago, there was a high degree of satisfaction among American elites with the governing consensus. Today, as in the late 1970s, there’s a growing shared sense in America that fundamental reforms are needed. I sometimes get invited to bipartisan, off-the-record salon discussions on various topics, and it’s amazing how much agreement there is on the problems and the need for change. This is a sea change.
During the populist era, we’ve seen the emergence and growth of new voices and institutions working on tangible ideas for the future, ones that address some of America’s core challenges and which are not simply a recapitulation of the pre-populist consensus.
I’ll highlight again American Affairs magazine, founded in 2017. Every issue is filled with detailed, wonky pieces very relevant to our country today. The current issue has an article on how to pay for electricity infrastructure investments, lessons from the Plaza Accords on how to address trade deficits, and revitalizing the Export-Import Bank. Do I always agree with these? No. But there is always significant, constructive analysis and ideas.
And again I’ll highlight Richard Reeves, a center-left policy entrepreneur who saw many of the problems facing boys and men that the manosphere and populist elements had identified, but who has taken them forward in a constructive, politically palatable register. His 2022 book Of Boys and Men, and his follow-up organization the American Institute for Boys and Men, provide diagnosis, but also ideas for reform that governments might actually adopt some day. He is taking this topic into rooms populism will never get into. Separate from Reeves, the Institute for Family Studies is looking at family formation and fertility trends, and making specific policy recommendations for how to increase both.
The Institute for Progress, founded in 2022, is another voice. It’s one of a group of newer, acceleration oriented organizations I could highlight. Its mission is to “accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress.” They sponsor the Statecraft podcast, which hosts practitioners for detailed discussions on how to make government work better. They also recently related a Transit Abundance Playbook with a collection of discreet, implementable ideas, such as increasing the required spacing between cross-passages in subway tunnels. These are eye-glazing to some, but are the kinds of ideas necessary to start bending the construction cost curve downward.
A bipartisan collection of voices focused on housing issues has developed a range of reformist ideas. This includes people in the so-called YIMBY (Yes in My Back Yard) movement, as well as the “Abundance Liberals.” They are promoting rule changes such as allowing accessory dwelling units (ADUs, aka “granny flats” or “carriage houses”), allowing so-called single-stair buildings, or reforming America’s outlier elevator regulations. This movement has gained traction both in state houses and in Congress, which recently passed a new bipartisan housing reform law with many positive elements. This world also gets a lot of coverage in the major media.
It’s not just wonky policy ideas but also people doing things. Mark Cuban started his Cost Plus Drugs online pharmacy in 2022 to bring prescription costs down, for example. Civica Rx, founded in 2018, is attacking the same problem from the other side as a non-profit generic drug manufacturer that combats shortages and price gouging. Bobby Fijan founded the American Housing Corporation in 2024 to build prefabricated row homes to both drive down costs and to create more family friendly housing typologies.
These kinds of constructively focused voices and initiatives have been emerging, and are seeing their mindshare grow. The people are often new on the scene, or newly focusing on these topics. And the organizations tend to be new as well. They are not focused merely on seeking a restoration of the political, policy, and cultural environment from before populism, but are actively engaged on new topics or with new ideas.
To be clear, legacy organizations and personalities are also engaging in developing these kinds of new ideas. It just tends to be newer organizations and movements like these. And the key is that it is not just about trying to revive Reaganism or the Obama moment or the proverbial “dead consensus.” It’s about how we address today’s problems, whether that be through old ideas, updated ideas, or completely new ones.
This kind of constructivism isn’t present in every key topic area. Immigration discussion continues to largely be driven by ideology, for example. That issue is more of a zero-sum battle between incompatible visions of the American future. But in many areas, we’ve seen a growing turn towards a constructive approach to the issues, even when many differences among the players remain.
I expect the new constructivism will continue to grow as a style. It is not yet a program, because its output is mostly discrete, point ideas unrelated to an overall coherent agenda (although the idea of an “abundance agenda” is an attempt at one). It’s also not yet a movement because it is not wedded to a party, political candidate, or effort apart from some individual items like YIMBYism.
New constructivist thinking is also unbalanced. It is more extensively developed and has a more robust ecosystem on “acceleration” topics - how do we build more housing, electric infrastructure, transit, data centers, AI, etc. and build it faster and cheaper? It’s less developed on the “formation” side around faith, family formation and fertility, gender, institutions, etc. But more techno-industrial acceleration without the human-social formation to bring our people along with it may well only lead to a recurrence of populism, maybe a rising left-populism this time.
I’m personally making a skin-in-the-game bet on new constructivism as the best way to engage today. While I engage on acceleration topics, it’s the under-developed formation areas where there is the most need and I think I can add the most value. So that’s where I’m directing my focus. In a sense, this is a continuation of what I’ve already been doing. “Build up, don’t just tear down” has been a guiding principle of my newsletter since the very beginning. But I’m now operating on the belief that a new constructivism is the emerging mode of American public discourse. I got the manosphere, the “Negative World”, and Trump right. We’ll see in the coming years if I got this one right as well.
Cover image: TSMC Fab 21 in Arizona by Hunter Trick/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0