The center cannot hold.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Column

It is the year of economic populism in American politics.

The 2016 presidential primaries feature two slates of candidates scrambling to outdo each other as spokespeople for the little guy against "the wealthy and well connected," as former CEO Carly Fiorina put it, with a straight face, during the third Republican debate.

Bernie Sanders has run a stunningly successful campaign for the presidency as a democratic socialist, drawing huge crowds to deliver dire news about growing economic inequality and the shrinking middle class.

And it's not just Sanders. All the candidates appear to be "feeling the Bern."

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy by declaring, "The deck is stacked in favor of those at the top."

Donald Trump, the rightwing populist insurgent, told Face the Nation, "These hedge-fund guys are getting away with murder." Wall Street investors avoid taxes and accumulate wealth, Trump declared, while "the middle class is ... getting absolutely destroyed."

Furthermore, Trump said, he wanted to take on corporations that pay no taxes by hiding assets overseas.

Even Jeb Bush, establishment scion, rolled out what the press called a "populist" proposal to close the carried interest loophole in the tax code.

Never mind that Bush's entire economic plan is based on a fantasy economic boom, the likes of which America has never seen. And never mind that Trump's actual tax plan mostly benefits the very rich. His proposal cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, eliminates the estate tax, and cuts the top capital gains tax rate--benefiting those same hedge fund managers who are getting away with murder.

Apart from scapegoating immigrants, bashing Muslims, and making veiled racist attacks against President Obama, the "populism" of the Republican Party is entirely theater.

This became vividly clear in the third debate. "Your Money, Your Vote" on CNBC was a cultural low point.

For starters, the whole business-news-as-entertainment CNBC format has turned toxic since the financial meltdown of 2008. Remember Jon Stewart's famous takedown of the CNBC stock-pumping enterprise and, in particular, its clownish host Jim Cramer?

Yet there was Cramer, soberly asking the Republican candidates about economic policy, as if he'd never told CNBC viewers to "Buy, Buy Buy!" just before the crash. And there was Fiorina --best known for her disastrous stewardship of Hewlett-Packard, before she departed with a record-breaking $40 million golden...