The Wizard of Oz was a metaphor for the populus vs. the Eastern elites. William Jennings Bryan was our first try to put a real non-factional populist leader in the White House. It didn’t work but we’ve had some real leaders, Coolidge, Reagan, Trump.
Well partially true. It was a metaphor about the people vs the elite, but not just the Eastern elites. Wicked Witch of the East represented the banks/eastern concerns and the Wicked Witch of the West represented the gold miners/western concerns.
So even then it was flyover country vs the coasts.
Tin Man represented factory workers
Scarecrow was the farmers
Cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan
Emerald city was the greenback
Bryan was in support of moving the dollar to a bi-metal basis using both silver and gold. Slippers represented silver on top of a gold base (silver slippers walking on top of a gold road). Bryan is represented as cowardly because he changed his presidential campaign platform from a focus on Free Silver (which was the main focus in 1896) to an anti-imperialism focus in 1900. Free silver was still on the platform, just not talked about. Bryan was for a free Cuba but upset after the Spanish-American war that the US took possession of the Philippines. Despite this opposition he encouraged fellow democrats to vote for the Treaty of Paris to end the war.