Why did the people's party and the populist movement of the farmers of the 1880s and 1890s fail?

Answer 1

The movement failed because of two principal factors:
1) the inability to make allianced between the farmers of the midWest and either urban labor or eastern farmers
2) the inability to come to grips with the race issue

Then in the later 1890s the revival of the economy took a lot of the sting out of farmers' problems and the movement largely died out.

Answer 2

the peoples party ran out of dip and most of the invited stayed home anyway
and everyone knows that farmers have never been popular so the populist movement never got out of the ground..