Wisdom From Robert Reich On How We Got Here, What To Do Next

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a cold water bath for so many of us. We told ourselves it was a fluke. But the year is now 2024 and his election to a second term underscores for us what looks to be the true nature of our national character and that is a sobering and depressing thought, that so many people could be duped by this man and what he stands for. Trump is no fluke. The path to a demagogue such as him has been paved for many decades now, since 1980 in fact.

The 80’s were a turning point in this culture and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has done a fine delineation of where we were before, what happened, and where we stand right now. His conclusion is one that you know: our central problem is whether we’re going to live in a democracy vs. an oligarchy. And Reich believes “a more robust democracy” is in our future. If that’s the case, then Trump may indeed represent us hitting our cultural bottom and as you well know, in cases of severe dysfunction you need to have a breakdown before you can have a breakthrough and start back on the road to health and sanity.

FOR THREE DECADES after World War II, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. During those years, the earnings of the typical American worker doubled, just as the size of the American economy doubled.

Over the last 40 years, by contrast, the size of the economy has more than doubled again, but the earnings of the typical American have barely budged (adjusted for inflation). Most of the gains have gone to the top.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the CEOs of large corporations earned an average of about 20 times the pay of their typical worker. Now they rake in over 300 times the pay of an average worker.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the richest 1 percent of Americans took home about 10 percent of the nation’s total income. Today they take home more than the bottom 90 percent put together.

Then, the economy generated hope. Hard work paid off. The living standards of most people improved through their working lives. Their children enjoyed better lives than they had. Most felt that the rules of the economic game were basically fair. […]

Today, confidence in the economic system has sharply declined. Its apparent arbitrariness and unfairness have undermined the public’s faith in it. Cynicism abounds. Equal opportunity is no longer high on the nation’s agenda.

And this is the soil in which authoritarianism grows. This is the kind of mind set that provides an opening for one such as Trump. Trump utilizes the same authoritarian playbook as Adolf Hitler, who intoned Make Germany Great Again at his rallies and blamed The Other for “poisoning the blood” of the nation. It is no coincidence that we have heard this all before. Reich continues:

1. 1946-1979, we grew together. Almost everyone gained ground.
2. 1980-2008, the great U-turn. Most economic gains began going to the top.
3. 2008-2010, the financial crisis. The banks were bailed out but millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and savings. The experience revealed the gross inequalities of wealth and power that underlay the new economy. This caused widespread disillusionment with the system.
4. 2010-2016, anger at the establishment. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump emerged as anti-establishment candidates — although Trump’s anti-establishment persona was fake (and still is).
5. 2016-2050, the choice between oligarchy and democracy. The 2024 election represented a lurch toward oligarchy, but I believe Trump and his oligarchy will overreach, and we’ll choose a more robust democracy.

Interesting that Reich brings up Bernie Sanders. 2016 was the year of the populist. On a strategic level, the Democrats would have been wise to put Sanders on the ticket rather than Hillary Clinton. And let me be clear: I’m not saying that Sanders would have been the better president. I believe Clinton would have been. But this underscores a mistake that Democrats frequently make: we’re too consumed with purity, defined as who is the perfect candidate for whatever reason and not concerned enough with strategy and reading the temper of the times.

Sometimes we luck out and get a candidate who addresses both. Certainly Barack Obama proved that. But usually we find ourselves dinking around going for the pure choice when the only issue (well, at least the fundamental issue) is electability. I believed then and believe now that Sanders would have won because 2016 was the year of the populist.

We can speculate about all this until doomsday but that was a key error that the Democrats made. You recall the slogans, “It’s her turn now,” as if Clinton was owed something. No, she was not. And while I believe she would have been a highly competent president, she was not the right candidate for that moment in history (anymore than Mitt Romney was.) Bernie Sanders was the right candidate for the era. Just a lesson we should bear in mind for the future, as we seek to build out of this mess that we find ourselves in.

WHEN MOST PEOPLE STOP BELIEVING that they and their children have a fair chance to make it, the tacit social contract begins to unravel. And a nation becomes susceptible to demagogues such as Donald Trump peddling the politics of hate.

Many of the most vocal proponents of the “free market” — including Elon Musk, executives of large corporations and their ubiquitous lawyers and lobbyists, denizens of Wall Street and their political lackeys, and numerous multimillionaires and billionaires — have been actively reorganizing the market for their own benefit.

The consequence has been a market created by those with great wealth for the purpose of further increasing their wealth.

This has resulted in ever-larger upward distributions inside the market, from the middle class, working class, and poor to a wealthy minority at the top.

Because these distributions occur inside the market, they have largely escaped notice. We tend to debate only downward “redistributions” that occur outside the market, through taxing the rich and transferring some benefits to the poor and working class.

Musk and Trump want to reduce such redistributions.

But the hidden upward redistributions inside the market are arguably larger.

This is why it’s so important that those of us who care about social justice speak out and explain what has happened. And why it’s crucial that Democrats focus on reversing the staggering inequalities of this era and getting big money out of politics.

Otherwise, the only explanation most Americans receive for what has happened comes from Trump authoritarians who falsely blame immigrants, “socialists,” the “deep state,” “woke”ism, Democrats, Black people, women, and other countries.

These are the excuses in the authoritarian playbook, but it’s never any of these. It’s always about money and power and a grab for same. Musk and Ramaswamy are making an oligarchical play right now. Trump is totally in favor of it. So is Vladimir Putin.

We live at a dangerous time in history. Other democracies, notably France and Germany, are having their own right-wing upheavals. Canada is having internal political problems. The very concept of democracy in this world is being challenged.

Reich is right. Big money needs to get out of politics. That’s step one.

[A tip of the hat to our fellow Zoomer, Nancy Finkler, for sharing Reich’s article with me.]

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