For all of his shortcomings, Bernie Sanders is an advocate for worker's rights, a proponent of raising the minimum wage, and a fighter for America's dying unions. His populism has always been in sharp contrast to Donald Trump's, not least in that Sanders does not traffic in demagoguery. But since the president-elect's transition kicked into higher gear, another difference has become clear: Sanders' populism is real. Trump's is a long con.

If cabinet nominations are anything to go on, Trump's populism involves smiling at blue collar workers while he takes their rights and benefits away. For Secretary of Labor, Trump chose a fast food CEO who made his fortune by keeping his workers' pay below a living wage, and who believes in automating as many jobs as possible. His pick for Secretary of Education seems intent on dismantling public education. And this morning, he named a third former Goldman Sachs executive to his White House. All of them will have a significant impact on economic policy, particularly with regard to Wall Street.

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BREAKING: President-elect Trump picks Goldman Sachs president & COO Gary Cohn to be National Economic Council Director - @NBCNews — CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) December 9, 2016

Sanders joined Chris Hayes Thursday night to discuss Trump's man-of-the-people shtick, including his attack on a union leader who dared question him. But they also touched on a much larger issue: Will any of this even matter?

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It has come to the point where we're not sure if millions of Americans care, or can even tell, what's real and who's responsible for what's happening to them. This has always been an issue in democracy, but we now have a president-elect and administration officials who are actively challenging the concept of objective reality.

If there are no facts in our new "post-truth" world, can Trump (and Paul Ryan) dismantle Medicare and say it's Obama's fault? Will, as Hayes wondered last night, Rust Belt workers know who to blame if their wages stay stagnant and their jobs continue to be outsourced? Will they hold the right people in power accountable?

Sanders acknowledged the perils of having a "pathological liar" in the Oval Office, and essentially said that people are faced with a choice. They can hide in a dreamworld of their own making, or they can "build a movement of millions of people who actually are following reality. Real change in this country, I'm more and more convinced of it, is not going to come from Capitol Hill. It's going to come from grassroots America."

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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