I'm not very well educated about the Populist movement. I'll have to look into it.
I suppose my reference to Wilson, and the hard left, is because to me it was the first time that US political movements were mimicking (being directly influenced by) European Marxist.
I do love history and will do some research. Thanks for the tip.
In the election of 1896 the elitist Northeastern urban Ivy League set were ueber-conservative and voted for William McKinley (who was assassinated by an anarchist). Meanwhile, the "fanatical Bible-thumpers" of the rural South and Midwest were advocating an income tax, nationalization of the railroads, and a limit on how much land a person could own. Ironically, while the Northeast and Southeast have switched ideologies they still remain at loggerheads, and the Southern Populist list of villains remains the same: the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Morgans, the Astors, the Harrimans, etc. In 1896 these people were considered "capitalist pigs." Now they are considered "secretly behind Communism."
It was perhaps during the New Deal that Hamiltonianism and Jeffersonianism switched places as the liberal and conservative positions, but I'm not sure.
Even before Wilson you had Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was, like Bismarck of Prussia, an advocate of socialism who was adamantly against actual socialist organizations. On domestic policy he was to the Left of many liberals today (though not on social issues, which weren't issues at that time), while he was Senator McCarthy when it came to subversive organizations.
American political history is certainly fascinating.