Frank DiStefano: 'William Jennings Bryan & His Amazing Populist Campaign'

Source:Frank DiStefano talking about populist Democrat William J. Bryan.

"In 1896, a thirty-six-year-old former Congressman named William Jennings Bryan walked into the Democratic National Convention and amazingly emerged the Democratic nominee for president. He proceeded to throw out his party’s agenda, divorce himself from its leadership, and all-but merge it into a popular third party called the People’s Party, or the Populists.

In this episode, we talk about the incredible 1896 presidential campaign that transformed American politics, destroying America’s stagnant Gilded Age political parties obsessed over the resentments of the Civil War and launching new versions focused on the new problems of industrialization.

We talk about the populist revolt of unhappy family farmers and workers that created one of America’s most successful third parties, the People’s Party, that elected governors and senators and won electoral votes for president. 

We talk about the Panic of 1893, America’s second worst economic depression in history, and how it energized the issue of bimetallic money policy, or “Free Silver,” meant to give relief to farmers now drowning in debt, all at the expense of wealthy people and banks.

Most important, we tell the story of William Jennings Bryan and his revolutionary presidential campaign that, in one dramatic election, permanently changed American politics and made him kingmaker of the Democratic Party for a generation.  It also soon forced reform in the Republican Party, as it transformed under the Progressive Movement into the progressive Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt.

The 1896 election is the most dramatic and cinematic story in all American political history. It’s the story of how a young man from the middle of America tapped into new issues at a time of disruptive change, launching a campaign that permanently changed America. In one election campaign, America threw off the Gilded Age’s decay and launched a new Populist and Progressive Era in which it reformed its institutions, began addressing its neglected issues, and set itself up to grow into a prosperous great power." 

From Frank DiStefano

"The People's Party, also known as the Populist Party or simply the Populists, was a left-wing[2] agrarian populist[3] political party in the United States in the late 19th century. The Populist Party emerged in the early 1890s as an important force in the Southern and Western United States, but collapsed after it nominated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 United States presidential election. A rump faction of the party continued to operate into the first decade of the 20th century, but never matched the popularity of the party in the early 1890s.

The Populist Party's roots lay in the Farmers' Alliance, an agrarian movement that promoted economic action during the Gilded Age, as well as the Greenback Party, an earlier third party that had advocated fiat money. The success of Farmers' Alliance candidates in the 1890 elections, along with the conservatism of both major parties, encouraged Farmers' Alliance leaders to establish a full-fledged third party before the 1892 elections. The Ocala Demands laid out the Populist platform: collective bargaining, federal regulation of railroad rates, an expansionary monetary policy, and a Sub-Treasury Plan that required the establishment of federally controlled warehouses to aid farmers. Other Populist-endorsed measures included bimetallism, a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, and the establishment of a postal savings system. These measures were collectively designed to curb the influence of monopolistic corporate and financial interests and empower small businesses, farmers and laborers.

In the 1892 presidential election, the Populist ticket of James B. Weaver and James G. Field won 8.5% of the popular vote and carried four Western states, becoming the first third party since the end of the American Civil War to win electoral votes. Despite the support of labor organizers like Eugene V. Debs and Terence V. Powderly, the party largely failed to win the vote of urban laborers in the Midwest and the Northeast. Over the next four years, the party continued to run state and federal candidates, building up powerful organizations in several Southern and Western states. Before the 1896 presidential election, the Populists became increasingly polarized between "fusionists," who wanted to nominate a joint presidential ticket with the Democratic Party, and "mid-roaders," like Mary Elizabeth Lease, who favored the continuation of the Populists as an independent third party. After the 1896 Democratic National Convention nominated William Jennings Bryan, a prominent bimetallist, the Populists also nominated Bryan but rejected the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in favor of party leader Thomas E. Watson. In the 1896 election, Bryan swept the South and West but lost to Republican William McKinley by a decisive margin.

After the 1896 presidential election, the Populist Party suffered a nationwide collapse. The party nominated presidential candidates in the three presidential elections after 1896, but none came close to matching Weaver's performance in 1892. Former Populists became inactive or joined other parties. Other than Debs and Bryan, few politicians associated with the Populists retained national prominence.

Historians see the Populists as a reaction to the power of corporate interests in the Gilded Age, but they debate the degree to which the Populists were anti-modern and nativist. Scholars also continue to debate the magnitude of influence the Populists exerted on later organizations and movements, such as the progressives of the early 20th century. Most of the Progressives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, were bitter enemies of the Populists. In American political rhetoric, "populist" was originally associated with the Populist Party and related to left-wing movements, but beginning in the 1950s it began to take on a more generic meaning, describing any anti-establishment movement regardless of its position on the left–right political spectrum." 

From Wikipedia

When we're talking about William Jennings Bryan and populists, I think we need know what it means to be a populist and what populism is. Populist is not a separate political faction and populism is not a separate political ideology, similar to nationalist and nationalism. You can't label someone a populist like you would be calling someone a liberal, conservative, progressive, socialist, etc. 

A populist is just someone who speaks to ordinary Americans who have to work hard to support themselves, who come from ordinary communities, have ordinary backgrounds, and have ordinary income, etc. 

The Democratic Party has or had a populist wing of blue-collar workers, who were very pro-labor. Most of those folks had just a high school diploma as far as education and needed their union job to support themselves and their families and be able to help their kids go to college, if that's what they wanted to do. 

The Republican Party has had, really since the late 1960s, a populist wing primarily of very fundamentalist religious voters, who have similar education and work employment backgrounds as the populist Democrats, but tend to differ with those Democrats on social issues. 

The populist Democrats are primarily just interested in economic issues and being able to save their jobs and keep their jobs in America, but generally don't push the social issues.

What William Jennings Bryan was 130 years ago, was basically a Populist-Progressive Democrat. And what that means, is that he's someone who represented and spoke to populist Democrats, but had a Progressive agenda to help people who were struggling, just to be able to continue to survive, but also to help them move ahead. America as a country in the 1890s and 1900s, was moving from being almost an exclusively rural and blue-collar country, to an industrialized country, with more big cities and metro areas and bigger big cities and metros, where in many cases you needed more than high school diploma to succeed in America and make it in America on your own. That's what William J. Bryan's 1896 presidential campaign was about.

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