Last week, Hightower and I sat down for a couple beers with author Cory Haala, who’s just released When Democrats Won the Heartland and who is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. Cory has brilliantly documented how, as the national Democratic Party moved towards corporate cash in the 1980s, maverick politicians throughout the Midwest and Plains states practiced good ol’ fashioned populism—and won. Not only did they win, but they also executed on the policies that they had championed while campaigning. Imagine that! With Hightower being part of the coalition of Texas populists who took the 1980s [...]