The massive crowds turning out for Sen. Bernie Sanders, including in Iowa, make one thing clear: Populism is still the dominant force in American politics. Sanders and his supporters argue that the answer to the excesses of an Elon Musk-style oligarchy is a sweeping left-wing populism that will tax the rich, break up corporations, and expand government power to redistribute wealth. On the right, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement channels working-class resentment into an equally sweeping nationalist populism that attacks elites, demonizes outsiders, and seeks to consolidate power in the hands of a strongman.
Both approaches share a common enemy: an establishment they claim is corrupt, out of touch, and rigged against the people. But more importantly, they share a common flaw: an insistence that America’s problems can be solved by rallying “the people” against an enemy class, whether billionaires and corporations on the left or immigrants and cultural elites on the right. Populism — whether of the right-wing nationalist variety or the left-wing socialist strain — fundamentally divides us into warring factions, each convinced that their side alone represents the “real” America.
What we need is not more populism. We need the opposite of populism: pluralism.
Pluralism is the idea that different groups — political, cultural, economic — must share space, values, and power in a way that allows for balance and compromise. Our Founders understood this. The Constitution was designed with checks and balances to ensure no single faction could dominate. Federalism allows for power-sharing between national and state governments. Even our national motto — E pluribus unum, “Out of many, one” — reflects the idea that America thrives when we work together across our differences rather than dividing into hostile camps.
A pluralist approach means acknowledging that economic inequality is a real problem, but that the answer is not a command-and-control government economy that stifles innovation and growth. It means recognizing that our national identity matters, but that American greatness has always come from welcoming new people and ideas, not closing ourselves off to the world. It means fixing government dysfunction, but not by burning institutions to the ground.
Most importantly, pluralism recognizes that the real divide in this country isn’t between left and right, but between those who believe in working within democratic institutions to solve problems and those who want to tear them down.
Nowhere is this battle more evident than here in Iowa. For decades, we were a bellwether state, home to a healthy balance of pragmatic Democrats, moderate Republicans, and a strong independent streak. But national trends have pushed Iowa into the same populist divide gripping the country. The Republican Party has transformed into an uncompromising vehicle for MAGA nationalism, while the Democratic Party has increasingly abandoned states like Iowa altogether, never more clearly than when leaders stripped us of our first-in-the-nation caucuses.
We need a movement that rejects the false choice between MAGA nationalism and Bernie/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez socialism. A movement that rebuilds our political center by embracing common sense over ideological purity. A movement that believes in economic opportunity, civic responsibility, and the idea that no one group, whether tech billionaires, government bureaucrats, or activist elites, should dominate our society.
That movement must be built on pluralism.
The time has come to forge a new path, one that restores Iowa’s independent political spirit and offers a real alternative to the populist extremes. If the crowds for Sanders prove anything, it’s that Americans are hungry for change. But populism has failed us before, and it will fail us again. Instead, let’s rediscover the principles that made our democracy strong in the first place.
Let’s choose pluralism.
Mike Michener
Mike Michener of New London is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Iowa and a former political appointee in the Biden and Obama Administrations.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Populism is our problem. Pluralism is the solution. | Opinion
