I DON’T NORMALLY watch Lou Dobbs. I sometimes briefly peek in on his show’s festivities, and that’s enough to get a sense of things. Immigrants are bad. Illegal immigrants are really bad. Free trade is bad. Outsourcing is really bad. His is a timeless populist message pitting the little American guy against leviathan-like forces like Chinese factory workers and Mexican lettuce pickers. Sadly, the American people have bought his message in whole. NAFTA has become an ugly stepchild for even Hillary Clinton. And the Republicans talk a lot about the need to beat those damn Chinese.
At the end of his show before last Wednesday’s Republican debate, Dobbs released the results of that evening’s poll: Would the candidates sound a populist message? Some 80 percent of the respondents said no. Dobbs hoped they were wrong.
