Lucas Kunce thinks populism has been given a bad name. Its outrageous, he says, that people call the Josh Hawleys, the Eric Greitens, the Donald Trumps of the world populist. Populism is about everyday people coming together to have power in a system thats not working for them. So do that, Josh Hawley. I mean, good Lord, what a charlatan.

Kunce is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Missouri, in the fight to take the states second seat in Washington, alongside Hawley. The primary is on Tuesday.

Kunces main challenger is Trudy Busch Valentine, a prominent donor from the Anheuser-Busch brewing dynasty. Kunces fundraising has been hugely successful but polling is tight.

Kunce has attacked Busch Valentine for representing the donor class, but in conversation he focuses more on attacking Republicans. Hawley, he says, is always talking about masculinity this, that, the other meanwhile, he skitters out of the Capitol from a riot he essentially started. The guy votes for every corporate judge that comes up in front of him. He doesnt do anything that would actually empower everyday people.

And Donald Trump, I mean, he put the president of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, in charge of our economy. Thats not populism. What they do is divide people based on race, religion, where you come from, in a way that doesnt give everyday people power. They make sure folks are divided so that they dont have power as a whole against the system thats not working.

And so I just think its a tragedy that we give sort of any sort of populist label to these guys because they dont want to change the system.

Now 39, Kunce is a Yale grad who joined the US marines, went to Iraq and Afghanistan and worked in international arms control. Hes a persuasive speaker, even over Google Meet, laptop camera on the fritz.

He is for gun control but he is running in gun country. That in part explains an ad in which Kunce holds an AR-15-style assault rifle, makes as if to fire it and then says that unlike potential Republican opponents including Mark McCloskey, the lawyer who infamously pointed such a gun at protesters for racial justice, he doesnt need to indulge in such macho posturing.

Kunce is also for abortion rights, in a state with a post-Roe v Wade trigger law.

He grew up in Jefferson City, in what would be considered a pro-life house and pro-life neighbourhood. Thats what I knew. And then I joined the Marine Corps. I went out and saw what it was like for these countries where they have oppressive Big Brother governments, where women have no rights. I saw what it was like to live in countries where theres this two-tiered system of rights, where if you have wealth, access and power, the worlds literally your oyster.

And then I see what they did in Missouri here, how these country club Republicans passed the countrys first trigger law, saying abortion is not even available in cases of rape or incest. Its like theyre willing to do that because they know its not going to affect them. Because theyre gonna go out of state, they have the wealth and the means. And so I think thats messed up. People in my old neighborhood, thats whos not gonna have access. Were gonna have a two-tier system here.

And Ive seen people from from my life go through very hard pregnancies I dont think they should ever have to be forced to go through. People should be able to have that right and opportunity And so my position is that I will vote to end the [Senate] filibuster and codify Roe v Wade. I think we need to make that happen.

The Republican primary in Missouri is certainly messy, an all-in scrap in which Greitens, a pro-Trump ex-governor who quit in disgrace and is accused of sexual and physical abuse, could yet come out on top.

Polling suggests a Missouri US Senate seat remains a stretch for any Democrat. All the same, Kunce has attracted national attention. He says that was a surprise.

I had no expectations going into this. I was a guy nobody knew. I wanted to run a campaign where I rejected corporate Pac money, federal lobbyists money, big pharma executive money, big fossil fuel executive money. People basically said that wasnt possible and that was stupid.

And we just decided wed do it the right way anyway. To actually stand for something and to win and to make sure you only represent people like the ones who took care of me growing up, rather than these folks who are buying off politicians and using them to strip our communities for parts.

Im thrilled weve gotten the attention that weve gotten for what were doing and how Democrats can win in the midwest again if they take a real straightforward populist message.

Kunce talks of big, bold investment in the midwest, of spending the sort of billions previously spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on building the next generation of energy technology right here, to build out manufacturing, research and development, were talking wind and solar but were also talking hydrogen, distributed nuclear or modular nuclear, battery technology [and] good union jobs.

Such aims are part of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better, progressive and Democratic plans fiercely opposed by big business and the right. Kunces description of a Marshall plan for the midwest, a reference to US aid for postwar Europe under a Missourian Democratic president, Harry Truman, seems in part a repackaging. He isnt big on progressive labels. Asked about identity politics, he prefers to talk about class.

My focus is on top-bottom, as far as identity politics go. There are a lot of people who are being used as targets, usually the most vulnerable people in our society, by the shareholder class, these massive corporations who are funding campaigns against trans youth, against gay people, against minority communities. They do whatever they can to fund divisive campaigns in order to make it so we dont have a top-bottom race.

This is what I was talking about earlier with these charlatans who pretend to be populist but theyre actually dividing people as much as they can. Im absolutely for protecting communities that are vulnerable. I just dont want to lose sight of this top-bottom dynamic thats really killing us and making it so everybody is fighting for crumbs underneath the table rather than actually having to sit at it.

Kunce has been presented as a representative of progressive masculinity, a type of Democrat who might appeal away from the coasts. He connects the issue back to Republican posturing.

Its crazy. I mean, Mark McCloskey on his AR-15, frightening people who are walking by his house. You dont even hold it right. He would have burned himself up with hot brass if hed shot a round. The fakeness here is just incredible. Josh Hawleys right there too.

Real men arent a bunch of posers. They are people like my dad who sacrifice for their family, sacrifice for their community, stay in the first job they ever took out of school for their entire life, even when theyre miserable, because they needed their little girl to have health insurance so that she would survive. People that invest in their community, in their families.

Its like the guy who inspired me to join the marines. This guy named Al. When I was a kid, we always volunteered at the church soup kitchen. Twice a month wed go down there and this guy who ran the kitchen, he was always like, OK, what chores do all the kids want to do? And my little sister and I were always like, Oh, we want to do the dishes. And Al was always confused about why two kids wanted to do the dishes.

But at my house with a big family, doing the dishes, man, it was like 40 minutes of standing at the sink, hurting your back, scrubbing hard and drying. Well, the church kitchen had a dishwasher. So doing the dishes was a scam there. You just threw a bunch of stuff in and walked away. I was like, This guys an idiot, he thinks were doing a chore. And so Al figured that out.

And two years later, when he renovated the kitchen in his house, he took his old dishwasher, put it in his pickup truck, drove it to our house and installed it for us, because he remembered that and he wanted to do something for somebody.

Thats what a real man does. Thats masculinity. Al was a marines officer in Vietnam. Never talked about it. Just, you know, quiet fortitude. Thats what I think being a man is and its why I joined the Marine Corps and its why I think these [Republican] guys are just a bunch of posturing peacocks.

My last question is in part prompted by Kunces mention of quiet fortitude. Kunce is a fan of Clint Eastwood movies. Which is his favorite?

Unforgiven. Because Unforgiven was such a comeback for the western brand. It brought it back in the early 90s. And I thought that was really cool. I mean, I watch all the old ones. Pale Rider, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but I think Unforgiven was just, it was a real comeback story for the genre which I love.

Im for In the Line of Fire. If Kunce wins on Tuesday, the Republicans will be too.

Read the rest here:

Lucas Kunce: Populism is about everyday people coming together - The Guardian US