How things can change in a matter of weeks. In early July, populism seemed to rule the day in American politics.

Donald Trump selected JD Vance, a figure who’s been trying on producerist rhetoric in recent years, as his pick for vice-president and invited the Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, to speak at the Republican national convention. Joe Biden, facing a flagging campaign and internal pressure to step down, met with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to lay out a pro-worker agenda for a potential new term.

Everyone was trying to claim the mantle of an American working class once maligned as politically expendable or morally corrupt.

It was a pivot to politics at its most basic: make promises to people, win, deliver on them and reap the rewards of their loyalty. Democrats, once the party of the working class, seemed in need of a reminder of who their base was. A recent study by the Center for Working-Class Politics found that less than 5% of TV ads by Democrats in competitive 2022 congressional races mentioned billionaires, the rich, Wall Street, big corporations or price gouging.

Still, congressional progressives were getting concessions from an unpopular president who had little chance of winning re-election and Donald Trump remained committed to the Republican party’s traditional pro-corporate, pro-tax cut agenda. The populist moment seemed like it would stick around, but more in the realm of rhetoric than policy.

Then came Kamala Harris’s rise as the presumptive Democratic nominee. The energy around the Harris for President campaign has put into doubt the inevitably of Trump’s election and given hope to millions. For leftwing populists, however, the problem might be less Harris and her most stalwart supporters.

Instead of thinking that all politics is identity politics, many on the left have traditionally argued that the best appeals tap into universal concerns that all workers share. When Gallup regularly asks........

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