Summary of the Rise and Fall of the Populist Party of the United States.

They emerged in part due to the backing of the Farmers Alliance — Effectively the beginning of modern unionization, and with that unified support behind them, they managed to carry four states in the west, something unheard of since the civil war. They received several key endorsements from leftist activists such as Eugene Debs, too. However, this appeal to blue collar workers failed in the urban sector, failing to capture enough support within the midwest and northwest. They won 8.5% of the vote in 1892, which would be a high water point. After that point, though, their collapse began.

Still building off of that momentum, they would go on to create several powerful organizations in the south. However, with that said, they fell into what happens often in leftist thought. They fractured into sects. In this case it was a war of attrition between the Fusionists, people who wanted to fuse parties with the democratic establishment on a dual ticket, against the Mid-Roaders, who didn’t want to combine with the democratic party at all. This created a divide in the party, and they were effectively defunct by the time of President McKinley’s inauguration in 1896. After that specific point, the party folded entirely, with their members moving either into the democratic party, or into smaller, decentralized leftist groups. Since around the mid 1950s, populist thought has been more ‘in’ with the political crowd, with parts of populism finding its believers in libertarian types on both sides of the left/right divide. Today, populist thought refers to general anti-establishment beliefs, and Eugene Debs is still influencing modern politics.