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Politics Jesse Jackson Was Populist, for Good and Ill Amid the race-hustling and shakedowns, Jackson showed a genuine concern for America’s forgotten men. Few political figures of the last quarter-century proved as polarizing as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died Tuesday at the age of 84. Perhaps it’s fitting that his obituaries range from hagiography to obloquy. True, Jackson inflamed racial tensions for personal enrichment and fudged his biography for political gain more brazenly than his contemporaries. But unlike them, in his quest for self-aggrandizement Jackson frequently stood with the American majority against the donor class and the leadership of both political parties by opposing job-killing trade deals, undeclared wars, and corporate bailouts while uplifting the impoverished Appalachians who now typify the MAGA movement. On trade, Jackson opposed NAFTA, GATT, and permanent normal trade relations with China. Other nations “employ lobbyists from both parties to control access to their home markets while Uncle Sugar opens up our markets,” noted Jackson. “The American worker can compete with the Mexican worker or the Chinese worker. The American worker cannot compete with slave labor and should not have to.” Competent trade agreements would “raise [foreign] standards and not lower our own.” Jackson routinely exposed self-defeating corporate welfare that disadvantaged American workers. “It does not make sense to close down 650,000 family farms in this country while importing food from abroad subsidized by the U.S. government,” Jackson proclaimed in his “Keep Hope Alive” speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. “It does not make sense to be escorting all our tankers up and down the Persian Gulf, paying $2.50 for every $1 worth of oil we bring out, while oil wells are capped in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.” In the Clinton-Bush years, Jackson’s rhythmic cadences and the populist Right’s rhetoric became indistinguishable. “We are required to pay $50 billion to the government of Mexico. For whose benefit?” asked TAC founder Pat Buchanan at Ross Perot’s 1995 United We Stand America Conference. “Not for the benefit of working Americans. It was for the benefit of investment bankers on Wall Street.” Jackson would tell the same audience that President Bill Clinton’s “bailout did not bail out the American workers … It bailed out the speculators and the investors.”  The two found common cause so frequently that a condescending interlocutor from the Council on Foreign Relations asked Buchanan ahead of his 2000 presidential campaign, “Who will be the vice presidential candidate of the Halloween Coalition: Will it be Ralph Nader or Jesse Jackson?”  Like Buchanan, Jackson opposed U.S. foreign adventurism in Panama, Iraq (both times), Serbia, and regime change in Libya (though not Somalia or Haiti). “Why are we spending $1.5 trillion defending Europe and Japan from Russia?” asked Jackson. “Let Europe and Japan share more of the burden of their own defense… They can afford it, and we need the money to reinvest in our own country.” The quest to form a political constituency demanding Washington shift from Cold War military spending to hyper-Keynesianism animated Jackson’s political career. Laying the groundwork for his abortive 2000 presidential campaign, Jackson sought white support by leading a bipartisan coalition including Rev. Jerry Falwell, Willie Nelson, and Martin Sheen on a tour of Appalachian poverty in 1998. Discussing a radically different Russo-American relationship, Jackson told thousands in Nelsonville, Ohio, “In Russia, when the ruble falls, we assume something is wrong with the system and come in with a [stabilization] plan. But for the people in the hills of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, we assume something is wrong with them.”  Jackson’s personal peccadilloes stifled his presidential campaign. But he impressed the issue on Bill Clinton, who briefly plagiarized Jackson’s speeches—particularly the insight that Appalachian kids often live in trailers and go to school in trailers. Clinton launched his New Markets Initiative in Hazard, Kentucky; dribbled out grants through the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC); and expanded opportunity zones. Then he championed China’s accession to the World Trade Organization. The subsequent China shock cost native-born Americans millions of jobs, strengthened the Chinese Communist Party, and decimated small towns and rural areas to this day. “White and [b]lack employment remained lower in 2019 relative to their employment levels in 2000 in highly trade-affected areas,” according to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve. Replacing good-paying manufacturing jobs held by white and black males with low-paying jobs taken by women, Hispanics, and Asians fomented a lasting “demographic and generational transformation” of Rust Belt communities. Like U.S. industry, funding for America’s rural poor has been sent overseas. “Since 1965, ARC has invested over $6 billion in more than 34,000 economic development projects across Appalachia,” boasts ARC’s website. Yet the U.S. has committed $128 billion to Ukraine since 2022. Foreign aid to Israel for missile defense since 2023 has exceeded the total amount of grants dispersed by ARC during its 59-year history by $700 million. In 1999, poverty in 30 Appalachian counties topped 30 percent, nearly three times the national average. Two decades later, that number remains nearly unchanged. Appalachia’s status as “The Other America” has continued unabated from LBJ’s War on Poverty, to RFK Sr.’s 1968 campaign, to Jackson’s visit, to Hillbilly Elegy, to the present. Jackson’s willingness to discuss Appalachia inspired long-lasting affection. On Tuesday, Vice President J.D. Vance revealed he had “a close family member who voted in two presidential primaries in her entire life: Donald Trump in 2016 and Jesse Jackson in 1988.” President Donald Trump personified his base’s diverse sentiments by praising Jackson and Rush Limbaugh on the same day. Jackson’s America would not be a better America; indeed, it might not be America at all. His “Rainbow Coalition” paved the way for Obama’s overtly racialized Democratic Party of minorities, LGBTQ activists, labor unions, and white progressives. Jackson waved the bloody shirt, exaggerated every perceived sleight into a new Selma-style civil rights violation, shook down corporations to benefit friends and family, embraced socialists and far-leftists, lionized Hugo Chavez as a practitioner of Matthew 25 while demeaning America’s Founding Fathers as slave owners, demanded “universal” same-day voter registration, and insisted the descendants of white abolitionists owe never-enslaved blacks “reparations.”  Jackson’s lasting contribution to American civic life is exacerbating every hostility, deepening every fissure, and picking every scab on the national body politic. His lasting accomplishments consist primarily of making race relations more fraught and demagogic, Democrats more extreme, elections less secure, and Americans less united. Perhaps most consequentially, few of his sermons revolved around the Bible, spiritual life, or how to prepare a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ.  When asked about the afterlife—frequently when pressed about his opportunistic embrace of abortion, which he once described as “genocide”—Jackson replied that God judges us on our overall “box score.” If Jackson struck out more often than not, it’s all the more reason to celebrate his good actions and remember the decency demanded of our shared humanity by praying for his soul.  Jesse Jackson, RIP. May his memory be eternal. The post Jesse Jackson Was Populist, for Good and Ill appeared first on The American Conservative.

UK Special Coverage Is the Nationalist Revolution in Britain Real? Reform is facing some of its first tests of broad electoral viability. UK Special Coverage Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK has now been dominating the British opinion polls since June 2025.  Quite an achievement for a party led by one of the political world’s classic outsiders—or losers, according to his critics—Nigel Farage. He has tested a number of political vehicles to destruction in the past, including the UK Independence Party, the Brexit Party and, much earlier, the UK Conservative Party. Carpetbaggers rarely travel farther faster. The paradox of Reform’s recent rise is that, while large numbers of voters agree with its policies, especially on immigration, many do not rate its leader. Nigel Farage is almost as unpopular as Keir Starmer. According to the polling organization, YouGov, more than 64 percent of voters think unfavorably about Farage, against 69 percent who view Starmer negatively. That is a pretty worrying metric for a party leader who confidently expects to be Britain’s next prime minister. Moreover, everyone testifies to Farage’s skills as a populist politician—a great communicator, as he is described even by commentators on the left. It is inconceivable that Reform could have become the leading party in UK opinion polls without him. So how does Reform deal with the Farage Paradox?  Last week Reform presumptuously announced its “shadow cabinet” with the former Tory ministers, Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, occupying the Treasury and equalities briefs respectively, while the Asian businessman, Zia Yusuf, covers home affairs and immigration. Farage joked that Britons would be seeing “less of me in future”.  There was much ribald commentary about this being a cabinet of Tory Party rejects and anti-immigration fruitcakes. But it is undoubtedly the right thing for Reform to do, if only to stop it being regarded as Nigel Farage’s personal property, which it literally was until a year ago. Reform UK was founded by him as a private limited company in 2018 and is still a non-profit company operating as Reform UK Ltd. British voters dislike the establishment parties, and want to hurt them, but they don’t seem to have great faith in Reform being significantly different. Focus groups run by the architect of the Brexit victory, the former Number 10 adviser, Dominic Cummings, show that even Reform voters fear that they will just be “another bout of chaos” if they get into office. So Reform had to show first of all that it isn’t just the vanity project of a “marmite” politician, and second that it has a snowball’s chance in hell of being competent in government. Well, Braverman is certainly an experienced minister. A lawyer of Hindu Indian descent, she was home secretary twice under the Conservatives and saw off attempts by left-leaning civil servants to have her cancelled. As Reform’s education and equalities spokeswoman, she promises to drive “cultural Marxism” out of schools and colleges and end the DEI culture in corporate and government bureaucracies by repealing the 2010 Equality Act. Jenrick, the former Conservative Justice Secretary, is “shadow chancellor” in Reform’s wannabe cabinet, and used to be considered a potential Tory leadership contender and rival to the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. He is promising to run the economy for “alarm clock” workers, not layabouts on benefits, and says he will stop tax-and-spending governments throwing their money around “like confetti.” So far, so Tory. Yusuf, the Muslim son of Sri Lankan immigrants, is a luxury-goods millionaire who is relatively new to politics. He has been a star performer for Reform on TV and has even said he agrees with claims that parts of Britain have been “colonized by immigrants”. As Reform’s prospective home secretary, he promises to deport all illegal immigrants and end Britain’s subordination to the European Convention on Human Rights, which he claims has prevented even criminal illegals being deported. Farage is clearly sending a double message. He is going to be very tough on illegal immigration, but he is not a racist. Else how could such prominent posts have been given to non-white descendants of immigrants? And Muslims to boot. Reform’s candidate for London mayor, Laila Cunningham, is also a Muslim. But all this multiculturalism has appalled some on the far right of politics who were erstwhile Reform fellow travelers. They think Farage’s line-up is not only too much like the discredited Conservative Party but is not sufficiently nationalist.  The so-called ethno-nationalists to the right of Farage, most notably Elon Musk’s protege, Tommy Robinson—a former football hooligan, as his detractors remind him—want a reversal of all immigration, or “remigration”. They believe too much legal immigration has diluted British culture and made ethnic Englishmen and women feel like second-class citizens in their own country. They now have a champion. Rupert Lowe, a former Reform MP, has set up his own rival Restore Party, with much vocal support from the X-owner. He has commanded nearly a million followers on the platform for his condemnation of  “the rape of Britain” by mainly Muslim immigrants.  Reform’s immigration policy is, Lowe claims, “weak, weak, weak. The barbarians are already in the gates.” He says that “millions must go.” It’s not entirely clear how Lowe intends to remove these millions, or how he classifies them, but he is inviting supporters of Tommy Robinson to back him along with another far-right group, Advance UK, which is led by Reform’s former deputy leader Ben Habib. There has been much ridiculing of these fragments on the nationalist far right.  Comparisons have been drawn with the recent divisions in the left-wing, Corbynite party, Your Party. There is an air of Monty Python about the behaviors of the “ethnos,” intoxicated by the oxygen of publicity on Musk’s X. This could be to Reform’s benefit. It does Farage no harm to be seen as not racist and even relatively moderate on immigration. His views are close to those of most British voters: Reform doesn’t want immigration halted, just for there to be a balance between those coming to Britain and those leaving, called “net zero migration.” Nor does it necessarily do him harm to be compared with the Conservative Party. For those of us with long memories, the views of Braverman and Jenrick are what many Conservatives used to believe back when it was a mass-membership party. It was euroskeptic, socially conservative, opposed to mass immigration, and intensely nationalistic. It was the party of “Britain first.”  It would never have countenanced net immigration being increased to just under one million a year, as it did under Boris Johnson. Nor would it have supported premature closure of the North Sea oil and gas industry or the subordination of parliament to lawyers in Strasbourg. This is a make-or-break moment for Reform. But it is also a critical moment in the reshaping of Britain’s political culture. Farage won a modest victory last week in forcing the Starmer government to reverse its attempt to cancel a string of local elections on the grounds that there is to be a reorganisation of local government in future. Reform has to do well in these local elections in May. It will also have to have a decent showing, if not a victory, in this week’s Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election in Manchester.  We will shortly discover whether or not the much-forecast nationalist revolution in UK politics is really happening. The post Is the Nationalist Revolution in Britain Real? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Who’s Afraid of AOC? Conservatives mock the future of the Democratic Party at their own risk. Vice President J.D. Vance couldn’t wait to poke fun at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Speaking at the inaugural Board of Peace event in Washington D.C. on Thursday, Vance used his very first words to lob criticism at the progressive firebrand from the Bronx.   “Thank you Mr. President, not only for your leadership but also for the kind words about me personally,” Vance began. “I knew exactly what I wanted to say but then after the president said I was so smart and that I didn’t want to repeat our congresswoman who froze for 20 seconds over in Munich, now I’m tempted, sir, just to freeze for 20 seconds and just stare at the cameras and maybe they’ll say nice things about me like they did about Congresswoman Cortez.” Vance paused for effect, but neither laughter nor cheers could be heard in the hall. On X, a viral post by the right-wing account Grimaldus derided Vance as “Jeb Bush 2.0.” The joke bombed because it didn’t make sense. No one—neither the liberal press nor the conservative new media types—said “nice things” about Ocasio-Cortez’s lackluster showing at the Munich Security Conference. New York Magazine described AOC’s performance in Munich as a “stumble.” The New York Times pointed out the congresswoman incurred a series of “slip ups.” And Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told the Hill that AOC “showed a complete lack of chops about international issues.” The only major left-wing media figure to defend AOC’s remarks openly was Emma Vigeland, an unrepentant progressive who has praised AOC unceasingly throughout her career. Nor were conservatives kinder. CNN’s Scott Jennings said AOC’s underwhelming outing proved that “America has just one adult political party right now, and it’s the Republican Party.” Megyn Kelly said AOC “humiliated womankind.” The New York Post called AOC’s performance “gaffe-filled” while Fox News labeled it an “absolute train wreck.” AOC faced even harsher backlash on X where users flooded the site with insults and mockingly urged Democrats to make her their nominee in 2028. And all of that was before President Donald Trump and Vance began to dig in. Trump, in particular, has spent several days attacking AOC, who he said “made a fool” of herself on the international stage. Speaking with reporters earlier this week, Trump described AOC as “incompetent.” The president, who has suffered similar criticism throughout his polarizing political career, suggested the Munich debacle could be a “career-ending” moment for Ocasio-Cortez. In his speech at the Board of Peace event on Thursday, Trump continued to pile on Ocasio-Cortez, dismissively stating that although she is a “young, attractive woman,” the congresswoman was “unable to answer questions” and “didn’t do so well” in her first big international moment. Hours later, aboard Air Force One, Trump couldn’t help but take another swipe at AOC, calling her “stupid” and suggesting that her performance in Munich would haunt her political career for years to come. Watching Trump repeat his rolling critique of AOC, I wondered why he, Vance, and the broader conservative movement seem so driven to undermine her aspirations for higher office beyond mere partisan loyalty. The obvious answer is that AOC has made a career out of punching back against Trump and the ever-shifting brand that is MAGA conservatism, which recently is drifting daily toward a retrograde neoconservatism.  AOC used her appearance in Munich to address what she characterizes as an “age of authoritarianism,” offering an explicit criticism of Trump’s use of the Oval Office to project U.S. power in ways that explicitly shape politics both at home and abroad. She claimed Trump’s leadership approach is intended to permit him to “command the Western Hemisphere and Latin America as his personal sandbox” while allowing Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to “saber rattle around Europe.” And though critics were right to assert that AOC struggled when asked about her position on Taiwan should the Chinese military take action, Ocasio-Cortez did earn applause from The American Conservative’s contributor Eldar Mamedov, who praised AOC for labeling Israeli actions in Gaza “a genocide” that has been enabled by unconditional American aid to Israel. Furthermore, nothing the congresswoman said in Munich—not her stumble on Taiwan or tacit support for the war effort in Ukraine—was so disastrous as the Trump administration’s current, real-life intentions for Iran are, should a deal fail to materialize. Speaking at his Board of Peace event Thursday morning, Trump proudly announced that he has ordered 22 new stealth bombers, which were key in the attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as part of “Midnight Hammer” in June of last year. So much for winding down the war machine.  For conservatives, perhaps the most concerning part of AOC’s show in Munich wasn’t where she failed but where she threatened to peel off support from Trump’s base. She deftly tied the rise in appeal of right-wing populism to deep economic insecurity in the U.S., a key motivating factor in Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024. Despite his campaign promises, voters believe Trump has materially failed to deliver economic relief in his second term according to figures reported by a widespread faction of varied pollsters. In an NBC/Marist poll released in early February, only 36 percent of adults say they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.  Though Trump recently admitted in an interview with NBC that he can’t understand why his polling numbers on the economy are in the tank, everyday Americans continue to express their inability to keep pace with ballooning prices and stagnant wages. When confronted with poor polling numbers or unseemly news items, Trump and his cabinet often pivot to the alleged success of the administration’s tariff policy or the roaring stock market, a sector long criticized for its extreme concentration of wealth. Only 10 percent of Americans own nearly 90 percent of all stocks, while the bottom 50 percent hold just 1 percent. The widening gap between the stock market profiteers and paycheck-to-paycheck America is a point AOC hammered home at the MSC. “It is of the utmost urgency that we get our economic houses in order and deliver material gains for the working class,” argued AOC. “Extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and, in a sense, drive authoritarianism.” If the congresswoman decides to pass over a golden opportunity to unseat Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in an effort to take the White House, the issues of working-class America will be what powers her campaign, much as it did Trump’s. Hours after Vance’s attempt at humor on Thursday, the congresswoman from New York delivered a pointed response on X, highlighting the silence in the room. “The only thing longer than my pause to think was their silence to his joke,” wrote AOC who included a single skull emoji with her tweet. It was the sort of prodding that AOC has become known for as she ramps up an ongoing verbal war with the presumptive 2028 GOP nominee. If Munich was AOC’s downfall, it’s likely to be a short-lived one. Amongst the younger generation, who will be potentially as decisive in 2028 as they were for Trump in 2024, the “young, attractive woman” from the Bronx holds a formidable advantage over all competitors, Democrat or Republican. Recent polling of likely Democrat voters found that AOC retains a remarkable 81 percent net favorability among young Democrats. Meanwhile, in a Yale Youth Poll conducted in the fall of 2025, pollsters found Gen Z voters drifting away from Trump and his MAGA movement while AOC surges among the same demographic.  Though no politician can win a major election through the youth vote alone, history shows that young voters often brandish greater influence than they are credited with. Whether it be Trump in 2024, former President Barack Obama in 2008, or the insurgent campaign of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in 2025, young voters move the electoral needle and that needle is undoubtedly pointed in AOC’s direction. But to suggest that AOC’s electability rests solely on young, excited voters would also misrepresent her potential to tip the national scales in 2028. As evidenced by her well-received performances as the opener for the Vermonter Sen. Bernie Sanders “Fight Oligarchy” tour in early 2025 or her ambitious speech in front of the Democratic National Convention in 2024, when AOC gets on the stage and has prepared remarks in front of her, she speaks with a confidence that is rare among the political class.  The GOP’s obsession with AOC reveals more about its own anxieties than her gaffes in Munich. The right risks repeating 2008-level complacency by mocking her instead of approaching AOC as a serious threat in the coming post-Trump era. If the GOP continues to drift back toward hawkish interventionism and away from addressing economic insecurity, a figure like AOC could potentially exploit the fracture in the base. After all, AOC speaks the same language of economic grievance that has powered Trump’s rise.  Who is afraid of AOC? The very people mocking her the loudest. If MAGA believe populism belongs to them alone, they may discover too late that it never did. The post Who’s Afraid of AOC? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Loyal Costco fans are lauding their favorite big-box store for a long-awaited change to its custom cake ordering system. In a company memo, Costco announced that it will be launching an app for customers to order customized cakes at the touch of their fingers without having to enter a Costco store."We've got ordering cakes and deli trays online coming," said Costco CEO Ron Vachris. "Many of the things that we've heard from our members that could be a little bit clunky are now moving to a digital state, and we're seeing great adoption right out of the chute."It's a massive change from the previous custom cake process. Costco lovers have long complained about the old-school ordering system that required customers to physically go to the store's bakery, where they would fill out a slip of paper with their order requests and simply drop it in the order box. @eatsbyrachel Anyone else feel like the @Costco Wholesale custom cake ordering system is a bit antiquated?

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