The Democratic Party’s problems have a two-word solution: “economic populism.”

Or so suggests much recent commentary (including, to an extent, my own). Yet, the merits of “populist” economic policies depend a lot on how that term is defined.

“Populism” is best understood as a rhetorical mode that portrays political life as a conflict between the many and the few — the righteous people and the extractive elite. This narrative frame has been a staple of Democratic politics since the days of FDR (if not Andrew Jackson) — and for good reason. Many economic issues genuinely pit the interests of the rich against those of ordinary people. And the Republican Party often takes the minority’s side of those fights.

Politically, Democrats have an interest in increasing the salience of the GOP’s plutocratic loyalties and reestablishing their own credibility as guardians of working-class interests. Substantively, the party should aim to redistribute economic power from the few to the many across a number of fronts — including through the promotion of collective bargaining and expansion of social welfare benefits.

But not all forms of economic populism are worthwhile.

It is not always self-evident whose interests a policy will serve. Some measures speak to the public’s intuitions about economic fairness yet undermine the well-being of working people. Economists are often better able to appreciate these adverse second-order effects.

Yet, policies that align with common sense — but not with technocratic consensus — often attain a populist aura, precisely because they offend credentialed experts. This dynamic is especially likely when a proposal boasts the support of a sympathetic, working-class constituency.

Progressives aren’t immune to such anti-technocratic populism. In recent months, Democrats have been fiercely debating why it is difficult to build housing and infrastructure in the US. Many liberals have argued that the problem derives in part from the unintended consequences of certain regulations. Some on the populist left have sought to discredit this fundamentally empirical claim by demonstrating that it doesn’t poll as well as........

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