Exactly. The populist reforms ended up creating the institutions through which the managerial elite utilizes its power against the interests of middle Americans. Any attempt to reform our political system with the benefit of Middle Americans in mind will take the libertarian position of dismantling neutering or otherwise bypassing the institutions through which the managerial elite exercises its power: the executive branch, the corporation, and perhaps even the university. The problem with the Baffler has been that it understands the problems: Democrat obsession with promoting elite social politics (abortion and multiculturalism) at the expense of economic justice; fake Rightist populism in the service of an aggressive elite driven foreign policy and state managed capitalism- etc etc... but it has no idea how to actually halt the proletarianization of the American middle class. Would any solution that Thomas Frank favors not involve employing several hundred or thousand ivy league elites to manage the empowerment of Middle Americans?  Let's imagine how well that will go for five seconds. Thanks for participating in that experiment. Moving on...

The problem is that there does not seem to be a social class out of which a more nationalist elite can emerge. The paleo-conservative thinker Samuel Francis proposed that Middle Americans themselves can provide the social base for displacing the managerial elite -- the dynamic economy of the Sun-belt, the cultural alienation and resentment and on and on it went. But Middle Americans lately tend to be a passive bunch - enjoying living under the cultural authority of Vivendi, Murdoch and other multi-national media corporations. While Francis was correct in looking toward the left in search of a usable strategy for the Right obtaining  power - specifically latching onto Antonio Gramsci's theories of cultural hegemony as the basis for political power, there currently exists no social base which can be lead into a protracted conflict with the managerial elite. Evangelical Christians have had some success at creating a (thin) counter-culture within American society but do not seem interested in obtaining and exercising political power in the long run. They are even less interested in ousting the managerial elite but instead look to baptize managerial society : federal environmental protection programs become "stewardship", wage laws become a form of charity, foreign intervention becomes missionary work and along the way Christianity becomes something else too.

Since the prospects for a peaceful Middle American Revolution seem dim, and Evangelicals are out, there are few options left. Either work hard to convince the managerial elite that certain nationalist policies benefit not only Midde America but the elite as well - or follow Reihan Salam in a romantic (but doomed) bloody revolution against the elites.