Vice President JD Vance made headlines last week by favorably quoting Huey Long, the Depression-era senator and governor of Louisiana. “The great Southern populist,” Vance said, made “‘every man a king’ the goal of his political program.” The Trump Administration shares that goal, Vance implied. “But no man is a king if their castle is under siege by criminals,” the vice president continued. “No man is a king if they can’t take their family out to dinner without being mugged or having their car jacked.”
Physical safety for all citizens was not quite the limit of Long’s ambitions. The Southern demagogue railed against the rich as the sole cause of poverty and championed a massive wealth distribution program. On economic policy, he was much closer to the DSA than to Trump’s GOP.
“He was much closer to the DSA than to Trump’s GOP.”
But in American politics, substance runs a distant second to style. Among the overeducated, underemployed professionals calling themselves Democratic Socialists, Long’s cornpone act would have as much appeal as a can of cheese whiz. Trump’s warmest admirers and worst enemies, on the other hand, will recognize the president’s resemblance to Huey Long.
In the famous Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stanley Kowalski (played by Marlon Brando) sits sulking at the dinner table as his wife and sister-in-law comment on his boorish manners. Told to clean himself up, he lashes out, smashing glass plates with his fist and throwing them against the floor and the wall. “Just remember what Huey Long said,” Kowalski snarls as his wife and sister-in-law, Blanche DuBois, stare down at the table, trembling in terror, “that every man is a king and I’m a king around here and don’t you forget it!”
Kowalski—brutish, ignorant, belligerent with insecurities he converts into grievances, smashing up his own house to show he’s king within it—is the progressives’ image of a MAGA voter in every respect save Brando’s sex appeal; Blanche—a snob, a fraud, delusional, wilting and helpless—is MAGA’s idea of a twenty-first century progressive. As these two political archetypes battle and bring out the worst in one another, it was fitting for Vance to remind us all again of Huey Long.