Rabid run.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan - Editorial

Pat Buchanan? I'm not surprised by Buchanan's stunning success so far this primary season. I remember being on a local TV show more than a year ago with John Nichols, and the moderator asked us who we thought was going to win the Republican nomination. After nodding to Bob Dole, Nichols and I both said watch out for Pat Buchanan.

I relate this story not just to stamp our soothsayer credentials, but to point out that Buchanan's popularity was predictable. He had a head start in New Hampshire, since he performed well against George Bush there four years ago. Beyond that, he's had an advantage ideologically. On social issues, he's the furthest right in a conservative field, always a plus in Republican primaries. And on economic issues, he's the only one who's been appealing to working-class Americans, addressing their concerns in terms that echo the speeches of Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, and Jim Hightower.

Buchanan does voices. He sounds like a progressive one second and Pinochet the next.

But his is the ugly face of populism. In the tradition of Tom Watson, Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, and George Wallace, Pat Buchanan plays the bigot's clarinet. He hits all the notes of resentment, and he tells his rabid followers to go froth and multiply.

His anti-immigrant bias is clearly aimed at people of color, as he none-too-subtly says he wants to close our border to "Jose."

His anti-Semitic bias comes through when he denounces Ruth Bader Ginsburg, drawing out each syllable of her name to stress her Jewishness.

His anti-black bias comes through in his defense of the Confederate flag and his opposition to affirmative action.

His anti-woman bias comes through in his comments about traditional female roles, and in his hard-core opposition to abortion.

And he's unapologetic about his bias against gays and lesbians. (He's unapologetic about everything, like any bully.)

Buchanan's popularity is in part an indictment of the Democrats, who no longer seem to stand up for working people. And it's in part an indictment of the left (as Nichols points out in his article this issue), since we've had no one on the national stage articulating an alternative politics that would genuinely defend the rights of working people--without recourse to the easy scapegoating of a Pat Buchanan.

When we don't contest for power at the Presidential level, whether within the Democratic Party or through an independent or third-party candidacy, we create a vacuum...