Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and ... Jon Corzine? | The Auditor

The angry populism that's powered Donald Trump to Republican presidential nomination and propelled Democratic U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has proven irresistible to former Gov. Jon Corzine.

Corzine told The Auditor he's decided to spend this summer and fall examining the fierce anti-elitism that's been roiling both major political parties by teaching a six-day summer seminar at Fairleigh Dickinson University's Madison campus, and then a 15-week class in September.

"Too often, populism is looked at pejoratively," said Corzine, a Democrat. "It's true that it gave us Prohibition and the McCarthy Era, but it also gave us a lot of positive things, too."

They may be taken for granted today, but the eight-hour workday, women's suffrage, and a progressive income tax were all populist causes a century ago.

"It's not just powering the Trump Train," said Corzine, "But the Sanders Train, too."

To show how populism changed from a politics of the left to a politics of the right, Corzine said he plans to delve into the life "The Kingfish," Huey P. Long, who was governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and in the U.S. Senate from 1932 until his assassination in 1935.

The comparison is apt. Sanders has campaigned on making college tuition free. Long offered free school books, public education, healthcare to Louisiana before making a third party run for president on much the same platform.

Sanders has campaigned with a promise to "stop the movement toward oligarchy" and "create a government which represents all Americans and not just the richest 1 percent."

Long campaigned with what he called a "share the wealth" motto.

"We do not ask to divide the wealth," Long said in a 1934 radio address. "We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and children's children can spend or use in their lifetimes, that then we shall say that such person has his share."

Long, the famously taciturn Corzine said, "governed with personality I couldn't."

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