Today I read Ken Auletta’s New Yorker profile of Lou Dobbs. The piece does a decent job tracing Dobbs’ transition from softball corporate anchor to hard-charging populist. Dobbs does spend a lot of time reporting on the plight of the middle class, and we’ve mentioned him before here at Warren Reports. To the extent that motivates elected officials, great. Personally, though, I’ve been troubled by Dobbs’ rhetoric for some time, and Auletta’s piece did little to allay my concerns.

Dobbs’ populism may make for appealing cable news, but it is not a coherent approach to solving difficult socioeconomic questions. He advocates a range of positions that are linked more by television ratings than by internal logic. My fear is that people will mistake Dobbsian populism for the governing philosophy of an emerging branch of the Democratic party. Already people are noting that some Democrats who upset Republican incumbents last month are populists in Dobbs’ image.

The two elements of Dobbs’ creed I find least palatable are his reflexively anti-immigrant views (he reminds me of the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know Nothing party in the first half of the nineteenth century) and his sweeping anti-corporate agenda. With respect to the former, Dobbs draws connections that are tangential at best, or do not exist at all. The middle class does not compete for the jobs with undocumented immigrant workers. If anything, middle class small business owners would benefit from guest worker programs or other flexible immigration policies. Dobbs’ fierce anti-corporatism risks alienating the business community from the middle class, which will not help solve their common problems: health care, economic security, enhanced productivity, etc.

Dobbs is definitely an interesting figure. I’m glad someone so prominent is speaking on behalf of the middle class. I’m just a bit concerned with what he’s saying.