True populists, liberal or conservative, simplify in another way. There’s no such thing as a trade-off. There’s never a need to balance justice and liberty, say, or fairness and efficiency. Once you understand the harm that the parasitic minority is inflicting on the virtuous majority, you have perfect clarity, the answer to everything and no excuse for vacillation. Tax the rich. Shut down the government.

As well as being divisive almost by definition, strident populism also tends to be angry. There’s a place for that: Americans are right to be furious about the Democrats’ health-care screw-up and the Republicans’ government shutdown, about the impunity of reckless incompetent bankers and the fact that the mentally ill can buy guns. Even angry voters, though, are suspicious of angry leaders.

You can’t have lively democratic politics without a dash of populism. But crass populism — the kind that blames the 1 percent for poverty or sees the federal government as an enemy – – isn’t what most voters want. They’re smarter than that.