Reading: Would the corporate media really tear its own tongue out rather than say the words "economic populism"?

Paul Krugman returns from the wilderness--we can even savor the irony that his piece is out from behind the Times Select firewall--to discuss the importance of last week's Democratic wave:

Ever since movement conservatives took over, the Republican Party has pushed for policies that benefit a small minority of wealthy Americans at the expense of the great majority of voters. To hide this reality, conservatives have relied on wagging the dog and wedge issues, but they've also relied on a brilliant marketing campaign that portrays Democrats as elitists and Republicans as representatives of the average American.

This sleight of hand depends on shifting the focus from policy to personal style: John Kerry speaks French and windsurfs, so pay no attention to his plan to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and use the proceeds to make health care affordable.

This year, however, the American people wised up.

True to form, some reporters still seem to be falling for the conservative spin. "If it walks, talks like a conservative, can it be a Dem?" asked the headline on a CNN.com story featuring a photo of Senator-elect Jon Tester of Montana. In other words, if a Democrat doesn't fit the right-wing caricature of a liberal, he must be a conservative.

But as Robin Toner and Kate Zernike of The New York Times pointed out yesterday, what actually characterizes the new wave of Democrats is a "strong streak of economic populism."

Look at Mr. Tester's actual policy positions: yes to an increase in the minimum wage; no to Social Security privatization; we need to "stand up to big drug companies" and have Medicare negotiate for lower prices; we should "stand up to big insurance companies and support a health care plan that makes health care affordable for all Montanans."

So what, aside from his flattop haircut, makes Mr. Tester a conservative? O.K., he supports gun rights. But on economic issues he's clearly left of center, not just compared with the current Senate, but compared with current Democratic senators. The same can be said of many other victorious Democrats, including Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Sheldon Whitehouse in Rhode Island, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. All of these candidates ran on unabashedly populist platforms, and won.

Of course, the corporate media are going to be dragged kicking and screaming to this truth, if they get there at all. Case in point: It's certainly arguable that "economic populism" really is the "center" now--but it's unlikely that Time Magazine thinks so, or would say it if they did.

This is the mass-market equivalent of a Republican concern-troll: Don't over-reach, you Democrats. Don't stray too far from where you've been for the last decade. They're going to play up the horse-race calculus angle of what happened last week--that's what sells magazines these days, after all--but they'll use all their powers to minimize the actual significance for economic policy.

Here's a great observation by Mannion--he's talking specifically about the Beltway love affair with Lieberman, but it nicely captures why Beltway Class doesn't want to go anywhere near the notion of a genuinely resurgent Democratic Party:

They need Lieberman in the Senate, they need him to be a power player, so that they can be as conservative as they are without having to admit that it puts them on the same side as the yokels and yahoos on the Right Side of the aisle.

Lance's piece goes on, and is much juicier than this little snippet. Both he and Krugman are going onto the Readings list in the sidebar.