THE RETURN OF THE REAGAN DEMOCRATS.

National Journal's Ron Fournier is today's Mr. Bi-Partisan, and this month went among The People way out in non-Philadelphia Pennsylvania in search of fellow bi-partisans. He ate at their diner. He shot the breeze in their barber shop. He heard their disappointment with their leaders. They clearly saw -- or rather Fournier, filled with their wisdom, clearly saw -- that the unseating of a powerful Republican, Eric Cantor, is a warning to both parties. There's a "populist" breeze a-blowin', and here's what it sounds like:

"This country's doomed," Guy said. Kercher nodded her head and told me that she's close to losing her house to a mortgage company and can't get help from Washington. For years, their county salaries haven't kept pace with the cost of living. "The rich get richer. The poor get benefits. The middle class pays for it all," Kercher said.

Ah, the middle class -- they've always been America's salvation, at least in newsweeklies, and now Fournier say they're bringing us "a peaceful populist revolt -- a bottom-up, tech-fueled assault on 20th-century political institutions." You know it's not the nasty sort of revolution because it's tech-fueled, meaning those few Americans who conditionally qualify as middle class can still afford laptops. Plus it's bi-partisan.

And what's the bi-partisan middle-class populist revolt agenda? Fournier brings in Doug Sosnik, who wrote a book called Applebee's America so you know he's clued-in and tech-fueled, to supply bullets for the revolutionary arsenal:

• A pullback from the rest of the world, with more of an inward focus.
  
• A desire to go after big banks and other large financial institutions.
  
• Elimination of corporate welfare.
  
• Reducing special deals for the rich.
  
• Pushing back on the violation of the public's privacy by the government and big business.

Sounds reasonable -- oh, wait, we forgot the most important revolutionary bullet:

• Reducing the size of government.

Because if you want to rein in the rich, corporations, the financial industry, etc., the first step is to scale back the government -- the SEC, the CFPB, the Justice Department and all that, they just get in the way; flying squads of billionaires, battening on the bathtub-drowned Small Government, will take care of all that for you.

Or maybe they're just loot the treasury on behalf of their buddies and destroy whatever effectiveness our government still has, as usual. But to paraphrase an old showbiz proverb, if you haven't seen it, it's revolutionary to you. Now if only we can get Joe Lieberman to run for President...