The same thing happened in our federal elections in Australia. There was a concerted campaign from both the major centre-left and centre-right parties in conjunction with the mainstream media to keep the big players in power. Insanely, the major parties both conceded that they’d rather the opposition in power than have to deal with a minority government.

The argument is always the same: “Party X doesn’t understand politics, and just seek simple solutions to complex problems.” Well, beyond the fact that seeking a simple solution is better than not seeking a solution at all, it’s just not true anymore that “populists” don’t have a solid idea for what the economy/nation/world would look like if they were in power.

Regardless of whether the populist parties are on the left, the right, or the centre, we’re given an image of protest parties which will say things that make no sense and would never fly in the real world. Parties that want the status quo broken but don’t have a real replacement for it. To be fair, this was once true, and it remains true for far-right parties (in Australia, at least).

But what Bernie has demonstrated is that there can be a vision for what would replace the current order. What would a society under a Bernie Sanders dictatorship look like? We have a pretty good idea specifically of how things would function, and it’s the same for minor “populist” parties in other Western countries. The rhetoric of the protest party no longer works for at least half of parties on the populist left, and it’s becoming increasingly transparent that this line is being pushed solely in service of the status quo.