Progressives have plenty of bad ideas that should be axed, but populism without an economic promise is a bloodless bleat.

It wasn’t long ago that Democratic party moderates expressed ambivalence toward the working class. In 2016, Chuck Schumer summed up the party’s attitude by predicting that “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia”.

What a difference a decade makes. In a recent report titled Renewing the Democratic Party the thinktank Third Way warns: “For the first time since the mid-20th century, the central fault line of American politics is neither race and ethnicity nor gender but rather class.” The policy shop even organized a meeting of heavy-weight Democratic party leaders to develop a new strategy for how they might win back the working class.

Can moderate Democrats, plotting their path back to power in Loudoun county, Virginia (the richest county in the US), convincingly make a populist pivot?

While Third Way’s advice, collected in a widely circulated memo, has some useful insights, more than anything it demonstrates establishment Democrats’ failure to understand the nature of working-class woes. In fact, the revival of populism, left and right, can be understood as a revolt against the world Third Way helped midwife. After all, they embraced an economic model – defined by free trade, deindustrialization, mass global migration and stagnant wages – that was responsible for the left’s breakup with the working class in the first place.

Third Way’s first takeaway from the election is that Democrats are culturally disconnected from the working class. And they’re right. They advocate moving away from identity politics, insist that candidates use “plain language”, “avoid jargon”, reject “fringe positions” and eschew “overly moralistic or condescending messaging”. This makes sense. Yet newfound fears of identity politics, or the excessive influence of the foundation-funded non-profit left, reflect a certain amnesia. Moreover, turning the ship around is easier said than done.

It’s no secret that sanctimonious political correctness, and preachy “social-justice” rhetoric have served as a major means to sideline........

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