corrente

On Dec. 18, for instance, Mehlman sought to rouse his troops with a message titled, "Foreign liberal cash used to defeat President Bush!" What followed was an extremely unflattering photograph of a grimacing, hook-nosed George Soros (one of the most significant contributors to the unofficial Democratic voter-mobilization organizations that have arisen in the wake of McCain-Feingold) and a message bemoaning the "billionaire liberals and the flood of foreign money that they're encouraging." Mehlman called on "450,000 AMERICAN grassroots contributors" to counter the sinister attempt by Soros -- a native of Hungary but a naturalized American citizen who has lived in the United States since 1956 -- to provide the Democrats with money from an immigrant. The ad comes close to resurrecting the classic anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jewish cosmopolitan financier undermining a Christian republic.

The press has been saying for a decade now that the Democrats would clearly fail if they moved to the "left." Now they have, at least on economic issues (and on cultural issues, they're defending their turf in a way they haven't for years). Of course, that message could lose in November. But up to this point it has gotten more people coming to the polls, in both Iowa and New Hampshire, than any message from a Democrat has in recent years. So far, populism doesn't seem like the problem that all those experts spent a decade predicting it would be.