by Robert Reich:'Washington insiders are in deep denial about what's happening.

[elleng]

I’m already hearing Republicans dismiss Donald Trump as a weird aberration. “Ordinarily, Trump wouldn’t have stood a chance,” a Republican operative told me. “He won because he didn’t have a clear opponent until the very end. And Cruz is almost as crazy as Trump.”

I get a similar story from Democrats trying to explain Bernie Sanders. “It was a freak,” a longtime Democratic adviser told me yesterday. “Hillary was old news, and voters were looking for something entirely different.”

But Trump isn’t just an aberration and Bernie wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Both, in very different ways, reflect a crisis in our political economy. In a Gallup poll taken in mid-July, before the conventions, 82 percent said America was on the wrong track. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll just before that, 56 percent said they preferred a candidate who would bring sweeping changes to the way the government functioned, no matter how unpredictable those changes might be.

As Hillary said in her acceptance speech, “I believe that our economy isn’t working the way it should because our democracy isn’t working the way it should.” She’s correct, but she didn’t finish the logic. Democracy is not working the way it should because it’s being corrupted by big money. That big money is altering the rules of the game to generate even bigger money.'

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/?fref=nf

[longship]

1. I like Reich, but I don't do FB.

R&K nonetheless.

[enough]

2. This is why I don't like DUers dismissing Trump supporters as evil racists.

There are a lot of people, A LOT of people, for whom keeping things going the way they are is the worst possible outcome. Having things stay the same, for them, is not a good thing.

If we keep assuming that the only reason someone might vote for CHANGE, out of desperation, is that they are evil racists, we are not looking clearly at the situation in the country and the world.

[elleng]

3. Thanks, enough, for the reasoned summary.

CHANGE is the word, and we'll see how much we get.

[yurbud]

20. Obama said something about change in his campaign then did exactly what Hillary said she was going

to do in her acceptance speech: compromise and reach across the aisle.

It would have made more sense to say, "Give me a Democratic House and Senate, and you'll see more change than your brain can handle!"

The DLC has triangulation so deeply engrained in their DNA they can't imagine a Democratic let alone progressive governing majority.

[vi5]

4. Except it really is racism....

Trump is saying that the reason things aren't going well is because of "others".

Illegal aliens.
Muslims
Whoever else is being scapegoated.

I definitely agree that "Let's keep things going the way they are going!!" is a bad message to send for a lot of people.

But what Trump is appealing to is giving people others to blame for their problems.

It's not the 1%.
It's not congressional Republicans.
It's not horrible tax policy.
It's not horrible labor practices and lack of regulations.

It's Mexicans and Muslims.

Personally I don't begrudge those who feel the country has left them behind or that things need to change. But in the case of Republicans and specifically in the case of Trump they are blaming other cultures and races for their problems, which by very definition is racist. Trump could be elected tomorrow and institute every single one of his horrible policies, and life would not get a single bit better for any of the people who are voting for him because they are dissatisfied with the way things are going. Because it is not those people that are causing their problems. It is the very people they are voting for and their economic policies.

[shopgirl]

7. Exactly right

I've been very lucky in my life. Not because of anything I did but because my husband worked his tail off and has done quite well. I don't mind paying higher taxes precisely because I know how lucky I am. I also understand that far too many people have worked hard and barely get by.

What I cannot fathom is how any of these people think Donald trump is going to help them. He has not offered one proposal that would benefit them in any way. The fact is that president Obama has produced results. Numbers do not lie. Almost every economist that I have seen says that we will be plunged into another recession if trump is elected. How does that help these people?

And, yes, I believe a lot of this us racially motivated. I maintain that if Obama, with his record of accomplishment, had an "r" after his name, the republicans would demand that his face be chiseled into Mount Rushmore.

[still_one]

5. Anyone who supports the candidate who is endorsed by the KKK has more issues than wanting change

[yurbud]

23. they want change but they can't admit that they have more in common with black & brown

people of their socioeconomic class than they do with their low pigment homies, the Koch brothers or Trump.

Breaking that bond requires them realizing they aren't going to win the lottery and join the other billionaires at the country club.

That's a tough sell.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

6. I always liked Reich!

I recommend the video about TPP from his FB post dated July 27th.

I know some people who liked both Sanders and Trump because they spoke the most strongly against those global trade deals.

I don't like the TPP either, especially as Reich explains it, but there's no way that I can support mentally unstable Trump. That's the way to nuclear annihilation.

At least Clinton is vocally anti-TPP now.

[TryLogic]

8. Big money has indeed altered the rules. Bernie knows it, many people know it.

Politicians owned by big money and lacking integrity do not believe the system can be changed. Many voters believe this as well. Maybe the message from Sanders and Trump voters is that the system CAN be changed. Or, the system MUST be changed. When elections, including primaries, are rigged, voters become enraged, disappointed, discouraged, desperate. Too many of them turn into irrational hate-motivated voters.

I believe Trump is everything all of the critics have called him. I can imagine tolerating Hillary. I cannot imagine Trump, The Loose Cannon, as any kind of even half-way honorable national leader. The thought of him being this close is sickening.

[Recursion]

9. Both candidates' support skewed richer than their rivals' in the primary

Reich is just wrong, here, this is mostly a "populism" of the well-off.

[progressoid]

19. Really?

"Both candidates' support skewed richer than their rivals' in the primary"

I don't want to re-hash the primary but I don't think I've seen those statistics.

[Loki]

10. So the platform to appoint SC judges that will overturn Citizen's United is imperative!

I get so pissed when they repeatedly recite the 82 percent say America is on the wrong track. Damn right, but let's complete the thought, shall we. We are on the wrong track because republicans have repeatedly and systematically blocked the ability of our government to function at all.

[LuckyLib]

11. My feelings exactly. Republicans have thwarted the

democratic process at every turn. Ignoring the will of the people to start governing should result in every single one of them voted out of office!

[bucolic_frolic]

12. There's

a lot going on in the financial world outside the political economy too

such as companies owned by billionaires who exercise robust pricing power
in the marketplace

marketing that convinces us there are 'must own' products that we pay
fat prices for and that produce hefty profits for companies

What I'm saying is there remains a micro level to the financial stress people
find themselves under

It's not all about stagnant wages, or the way the government functions

[BlueStreak]

13. And Ron Paul. And Occupy. And Black Lives Matter

These are all variations on the same thing. The average person has gotten screwed royally in this country. People feel it. People know it. They don't always have the ability to reason through what is happening, thus we get people like Trump.

The Clintons are not going to help us very much with that, just as this wasn't a priority for Obama. As Sanders says, this is a movement, not a person. We have to get Hillary elected because Trump would be so much more of a disaster. But mainly we have to keep the movement growing. And we have to be willing to welcome in some people who have found a home with Trump. For many of them, it is ignorance that took them there, and ignorance can be cured.

[LostinRed]

14. Well we'll see

If these dummies think Trump will change anything change anything for the better, they deserve him.

[nikto]

15. FASCINATING DEBATE----Robert Reich & Chris Hedges !!!!

This is from Democracy Now, a few days ago.

I like and admire, and try to heed, both of these fine Americans.


This is not some airhead corporate-media argument over fluff.

These guys are 2 heavyweights, and this discussion shows us the differences between
those within different parts of the "Left".

Reich is more establishment, but much more outspoken than most on the economic realities of today.
He was a HUGE Bernie-supporter. Smart man. Good heart.
He knows the Clintons and their circle personally, so that is either a plus or minus (YOU decide),
or perhaps both?

Chris Hedges is an intellectual beacon of the Left and has LIVED, and is living, what he speaks.
I have learned much from his clarity over the years.

He does have a very strict moral code and judgement that even some Progressives might find stringent
on an issue or 2, as I do. But that's another disussion.

This discussion/debate makes me proud of the "Librul Media".

[elleng]

16. Yes, it's a good one!

[nikto]

17. IMO, these 2 need to try to work together more over time, if Progressivism is to triumph

Just like the different camps on this site can and need to do,
now, and in the future.

[elleng]

18. Right,

and I hope we CAN!

[yurbud]

24. somebody alerted when I posted the transcript of what Reich said

[nikto]

25. Alerted for What REICH said?

Now that is surprising.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps Reich is seen as a traitor by insiders now for supporting Bernie?

[Eleanors38]

21. Sooner or later, the lib-left WILL talk to the tea partyers. nt

[elleng]

22. Need to, should 'have,'

should have recognized similarity of issues some time ago.

[Eleanors38]

26. Much talk is made of how the old "majority" population of whites is giving way to...

an increasing population of immigrant minorities, often seen as the new majority. This ignores the fact 2/3 of the population is still Euro-American, and cannot be ignored if sustainable progressive elections and policies are to be effected; after all, they are humans and citizens, too. The recitation of this majority shift also ignores the dynamic change in minority populations: G.W. Bush was elected at least once with ove 40% of the Mexican population and most of the Cuban-American population; Indian-Americans, until very recently, usually voted Republican, and much the Asian-American population did as well. And history shows that several Southern states voted for FDR, the most left-of-center Democrat ever to hold the presidency. So-called "minority" communities are no where near homogeneous and progressive by default, and there is no reason to expect they will become so.

The GOP has a one-page ideology, and it knows how to sell it. The Democrats have a pamphlet of corporate qualifiers, and they spread 'em on a card table, then walk away.