Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 38

Buying the Presidency

Bad enough that a tyrant is destroying American democracy. Now an oligarch is trying to buy the...

5 Ways Donald Trump Has Not Drained the SwampIt seems like...

5 Ways Donald Trump Has Not Drained the Swamp

It seems like forever ago when Donald Trump promised to “Drain the Swamp” if elected president. Well, it turns out this was one of the biggest whoppers in modern American politics.

Here are five ways he’s made the swamp even swampier.

1.He has packed his administration with former lobbyists and corporate executives. He has installed a former Boeing executive to run the Defense Department; a former pharmaceutical lobbyist to run the Department of Health and Human Services; a former coal lobbyist to run the Environmental Protection Agency, and a former oil lobbyist to run the Department of the Interior. In total, more than 300 lobbyists now work in the Trump administration – many in key positions overseeing the industries they used to lobby for. 

2. He and his family are personally profiting from the presidency. Despite Trump’s promise he’d sever all ties with his existing businesses and place all assets in a “blind” trust to eliminate any conflicts of interest, documents show Trump remains the sole beneficiary of his trust and still retains the legal power to revoke the trust at any time. Meanwhile, foreign dignitaries have flooded Trump’s hotels, lining his pockets in clear violation of the Constitution. He even attempted to host the G-7 at his own luxury golf course until he was forced to back down.

3. He is catering to billionaires and corporations at the expense of the American people. In the fall of 2017, mega-donors shelled out more than $31 million in political contributions to Trump and Republicans. And in return, they got a massive $2 trillion tax cut. Not a bad return on investment. As Trump told his wealthy friends at Mar-a-Lago just days after the tax bill became law, “You all just got a lot richer.”  

4. He is using taxpayer dollars to subsidize his luxurious lifestyle. Since taking office, Trump’s golf trips alone have cost taxpayers more than $110 million dollars. His children have also charged taxpayers for costs associated with business trips around the world that they’ve taken, including India and Uruguay. Taxpayers even footed the bill for Donald Trump Junior’s hunting trip to Canada.

5. The Trump administration has been riddled with scandals and ethics violations. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross held on to investments and never divested despite pledging to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has tried to arrange meetings with Chinese officials for her family business. Ethics officials have found Kellyanne Conway broke laws that prohibit government workers from engaging in political activities. The list goes on, and on. This has been the most corrupt administration in American history.

Trump is exploiting everything that’s vulnerable in our political system. But in order to truly stop the corruption of our democracy, we have to fix what’s broken. We must get big money out of politics, end the flow of lobbyists in and out of government, and strengthen ethics laws.

Trump has enlarged and deepened the swamp, but the swamp was there before he got to Washington. One of the first tasks of the next president must be to drain the swamp once and for all.

The Real State of the Union

I wasn’t going to comment on Trump’s lie-filled State of the Union message but the...

THE STATE OF THE DIS-UNIONAn impeached president who was on...

THE STATE OF THE DIS-UNION

An impeached president who was on trial and is up for re-election will be delivering a state of the union address to the most divided union in living memory. He will be giving his address to both his jurors and prosecutors, and most importantly, to the voters that will decide his fate in November.

It’s not unprecedented for an impeached president to give a state of the union address. Bill Clinton delivered his State of the Union in 1999 while in the middle of his Senate trial. But that’s where the similarities end.

Clinton was not up for re-election when he gave his speech, so he didn’t need to employ any campaign-style rhetoric. Trump is a polarizing, divisive president who is addressing an America that has never been so divided.

But this begs the question: why are we so divided?

We’re not fighting a hugely unpopular war on the scale of Vietnam. We’re not in a deep economic crisis like the Great Depression. Yes, we disagree about guns, abortion, and immigration, but we’ve disagreed about them for decades. So why are we so divided now?

Ferocious partisanship is not new. Newt Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House who led the House’s impeachment investigation into Clinton, pioneered the combative partisanship we’re used to today. But today’s divisions are far deeper than they were then.

Part of the answer is Trump himself. The Great Divider knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos, evangelicals against secularists — keeping everyone stirred up by vilifying, disparaging, denouncing, defaming, and accusing others of the worst. Trump thrives off disruption and division.

But that begs another question: Why have we been so ready to be divided by Trump?

One theory is the underlying tension that an older, whiter, and less educated America, concentrated in rural areas, is losing out to a “new” America that’s younger, more diverse, more educated, and concentrated in urban areas. These trends, while much more prominent these days, have been going on since the start of the 20th century. Why are they causing so much anger now?

Another hypothesis is that we are geographically sorting ourselves into Republican and Democratic regions of the country, surrounding ourselves with like-minded neighbors and friends so we no longer talk to people with opposing views. But why are we doing this?

The rise of social media sensationalizing our differences in order to attract eyeballs and advertisers, plays a crucial role in exacerbating the demographic and geographic trends I just mentioned. But it alone isn’t responsible for our polarized nation.

Together, all of these factors contribute to the political schism we’re experiencing today. But none of them alone point to any large, significant change in the structure of our society that can account for what’s happened.

Let me have a go.

In the fall of 2015, I visited Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina for a research project I was doing on the changing nature of work. I spoke with many of the same people I had met twenty years before when I was secretary of labor, as well as with some of their grown children.

What I heard surprised me. Twenty years ago, many said they’d been working hard and were frustrated they weren’t doing better. Now, that frustration had been replaced by full-blown anger — anger towards their employers, the government, Wall Street.

Many had lost jobs, savings, or homes in the Great Recession following the financial crisis of 2008, or knew others who had. By the time I spoke with them, most were back in jobs but the jobs paid no more than they had two decades before in terms of purchasing power.

I heard the term “rigged system” so often I began asking people what they meant by it. They spoke about flat wages, shrinking benefits, and growing job insecurity. They talked about the bailout of Wall Street, political payoffs, insider deals, soaring CEO pay, and “crony capitalism.”

These complaints came from people who identified as Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. A few had joined the Tea Party, while a few others had been involved in the Occupy movement.

With the 2016 political primaries looming, I asked them which candidates they found most attractive. At the time, Democratic Party insiders favored Hillary Clinton and Republican insiders favored Jeb Bush. Yet no one I spoke with mentioned Clinton or Bush.

They talked instead about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. When I asked why, they said Sanders or Trump would “shake things up” or “make the system work again” or “stop the corruption” or “end the rigging.”

In the following year, Sanders – a seventy-four-year old Jew from Vermont who described himself as a democratic socialist and wasn’t a registered Democrat until the 2016 presidential primaries – came within a whisker of beating Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed her in the New Hampshire primary, and ended up with 46 percent of the pledged delegates from Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Trump – a sixty-nine-year-old ego-maniacal billionaire reality-TV star who had never held elective office or had anything to do with the Republican Party and who lied compulsively about everything – won the Republican primaries and then went on to beat Clinton, one of the most experienced and well-connected politicians in modern America (although he didn’t win the popular vote, and had some help from the Kremlin).

Something very big had happened, and it wasn’t due to Sanders’s magnetism or Trump’s likeability. It was a rebellion against the establishment.

That rebellion is still going on, although much of the establishment still denies it. They have come up with myriad explanations for Trump’s ascendance, some with validity; some without: It was hatred of Obama, it was hatred of Hillary, it was people voting third party, it was racism and xenophobia.

It’s important to note that although racism and xenophobia in America date to before the founding of the Republic, they have never before been so central to a candidate’s appeal and message as they’ve been with Trump. Aided by Fox News and an army of right-wing outlets, Trump used the underlying frustrations of the working class and channeled them into bigotry, but this was hardly the first time in history a demagogue has used this cynical ploy.

Trump convinced many blue-collar workers feeling ignored by the powers that be that he was their champion. Hillary Clinton did not convince them that she was. Her decades of public service ended up being a negative, not a positive: She was indubitably part of the establishment, the epitome of decades of policies that had left these blue-collar workers in the dust. (It’s notable that during the primaries, Bernie Sanders did far better than Clinton with blue-collar voters.)

A direct line connects the four-decade stagnation of wages with the bailout of Wall Street, the rise of the Tea Party (and, briefly, Occupy), and the successes of Sanders and Trump in 2016. By 2016, Americans understood that wealth and power had moved to the top. Big money had rigged our politics. This was the premise of Sanders’s 2016 campaign. It was also central to Trump’s appeal (“I’m so rich I can’t be bought off”), which he quickly reneged on once elected, delivering everything big money could have imagined.

The most powerful force in American politics today continues to be anti-establishment fury at a rigged system. Vicious partisanship, record-breaking economic inequality, and the resurgence of white supremacy are all byproducts of this rigged system. The biggest political battle today isn’t between left, right, or center: it’s between Trump’s authoritarian populism  and democratic (small “d”) populism.

Democrats cannot defeat authoritarian populism without an agenda of radical democratic reform, an anti-establishment movement that tackles runaway inequality and heals the racial wounds Trump has inflicted. Even though he’s a Trojan Horse for big corporations and the rich – giving them all the  tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks they’ve ever wanted – he still has large swaths of the working class convinced  he’s on their side.

Democrats must stand squarely on the side of democracy against oligarchy. We must form a unified coalition of people of all races, genders, sexualities, and classes, and band together to unrig the system. Trump is not the cause of our divided nation; he is the symptom of a rigged system that was already dividing us. It’s not enough to defeat him. We must reform the system that got us here in the first place to ensure that no future politician will ever again imitate Trump’s authoritarian demagoguery.

For now, let’s boycott the State of the Union and show the ratings-obsessed demagogue that the American people refuse to watch an impeached president continue to divide us.

Friends,We’re launching a new talk show called “The Common...

Friends,

We’re launching a new talk show called “The Common Good,” with new episodes every Thursday on my YouTube channel. The inaugural episode is now up. In it, I talk with Katie Milne from the Inequality Media team about the Senate trial, the bombshell John Bolton news, witnesses, and the outright crazy things Donald Trump’s lawyers and GOP lackeys are saying to try to acquit our lawless president. We also discuss the upcoming Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders’ rise in the polls, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer attempting to buy the presidency, and what we can expect in Iowa.

Inequality Media is a digital media organization aimed at debunking right-wing lies, educating the public about inequality and imbalance of power, and breaking down solutions to the economic and structural issues plaguing our country. We provide a platform for you to learn, share your ideas, and, hopefully, mobilize your communities to make change for the common good.

Please join us. 

Robert Reich

Presidential Primaries: What You Need to KnowEvery four years,...

Presidential Primaries: What You Need to Know

Every four years, our country holds a general election to decide who will be our next president. Before that happens, though, each party must choose its candidate through primary elections.

But our system of primaries can be a bit confusing. So here’s a quick primer on the upcoming primaries, containing the most important things you need to know based on the most frequently asked questions:

Are primaries, caucuses, and conventions written into the Constitution?

No. The Constitution says nothing about primaries or caucuses. Or about political parties.

So where did primaries and caucuses come from?

From the parties themselves. The first major political party convention was held in 1831 by the National Republican Party (also known as the Anti-Jacksonian Party). The first Democratic National Convention was held in 1832.

Who decides how primaries are run?

It’s all up to the parties at the state level. Political parties can even decide not to hold a primary. This year, five states have decided not to hold Republican presidential primaries and caucuses, a move designed to stop Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.

Can state laws override party decisions?

No. In 1981, the Supreme Court held that the Democratic Party wasn’t required to admit Wisconsin delegates to its national convention since they hadn’t been selected in accordance with Democratic Party rules. The court said that a political party is protected by the First Amendment to come up with its own rules.

Why  did we start holding primaries?

In the 19th century, the process for deciding on a party’s nominee was controlled by party bosses, who chose the delegates to the party conventions.

In the early 20th century, some states began to hold primaries to choose delegates for party nominating conventions.

Although the outcomes of those primaries weren’t binding, they sent a message about how a candidate might do in a general election. In 1960, for example, John F. Kennedy’s victory in the West Virginia primary [archival footage] was viewed by Democratic Party leaders as a strong sign that a Catholic like Kennedy could win the votes of Protestants.

As recently as 1968, a candidate could still become the Democratic nominee without participating in any primaries, as Hubert Humphrey did that year. But since then, both parties have changed their rules so their presidential nominees depend on the outcomes of primaries and caucuses. They made these changes to better ensure their candidates would succeed in the general election.

What’s the difference between a caucus and a primary?

States that hold primaries allow voters to cast secret ballots in support of candidates. States that hold caucuses rely instead on local in-person gatherings at a particular time and place – maybe in a high school gym or a library – where voters who turn up openly decide which candidates to support. Here are the states that will have Democratic primaries in 2020 and those that will have caucuses: Iowa, Nevada, Kansas, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Maine.

What’s the advantage of one over the other?

Primaries are the easiest way to vote. Caucuses are more difficult to participate in, so the people who turn out for them are usually the most enthusiastic and engaged voters. In caucuses for the 2008 and 2016 Democratic nominations, for example, Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama and then to Bernie Sanders. Fewer than 5 percent of pledged delegates will be awarded by caucuses in the upcoming Democratic primary, down from 14 percent in 2016.

Are Democratic and Republican primaries the same?

No. One of the biggest differences is in how delegates are allocated. In the Democratic Party delegates are allocated proportionally – so that, for example, a candidate who wins 40 percent of a state’s vote in the Democratic primary will win 40 percent of that state’s delegates. The Republican Party allows each individual state to choose how its delegates are allocated, with some states allocating delegates proportionally and some giving all their delegates to the winner of the primary.

Another difference involves what are known as “superdelegates” – typically elected officials and prominent party members like former presidents or congressional leaders. These superdelegates are automatically seated at the party’s national convention and can vote however they like. Superdelegates are still used by the Democratic Party but the Republican Party eliminated superdelegates in 2012. In 2018, the Democratic Party reduced the power of superdelegates, allowing them to vote only in contested conventions, when no candidate has a majority of votes going into the convention.

What’s the difference between an open, semi-closed, and closed primary?

Some states have closed primaries, where the only people who can participate are those that have registered as members of a political party. Independents and members of another party are not eligible.

Other states have semi-closed primaries, in which both registered party members and Independents can vote. Different states also have different rules about when voters must choose which primary they wish to vote in – for example, registering with a party on the day of the primary or even at the time of voting.

In open-primary states, any registered voter can participate in which ever party’s primary they choose.

Why is Iowa first? Why is New Hampshire second? How is that order determined?

It may seem odd that the first two primaries occur in tiny overwhelmingly white rural states – and it is. But hey, here we are. Iowa’s caucus is first, by tradition. New Hampshire’s primary must occur at least seven days before any other primary, according to New Hampshire state law. Originally held in March of a presidential election year, the New Hampshire primary has repeatedly been moved forward in order to maintain its status as the first primary.

What’s “Super Tuesday?”

That’s the Tuesday during primary season when the greatest number of states hold primary elections. This year, Super Tuesday will be March 3 – coming after the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada Democratic caucus, and the South Carolina Democratic primary. And Super Tuesday will be really super because two huge states with lots of delegates – California and Texas – have both moved their primaries to March 3. All told, 9 states will hold primaries that day, including 6 of the most-populous – meaning almost 29 percent of the U.S. population will have a chance to get in on picking the presidential candidates that day.

So once a state’s voters have decided on their candidates, how are the specific delegates to a party convention chosen?

The national parties have left that up to their state parties, so it varies from state to state. Delegates are typically party activists or insiders who have been supporters of the candidate they’re chosen to represent at the national party convention.

Do delegates to a national party convention have to vote for the candidate they’ve pledged to support?

Both parties’ rules require that they do, at least on the first ballot.

What’s a contested convention?

A contested convention is one where no candidate has a majority of delegates going into the convention.

When was the last contested convention?

A while back, but we could see one again this year. In 1984, Vice President Walter Mondale entered the Democratic convention only a few delegates short of a majority. In 1976 Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan competed for the Republican nomination, and at the start of the convention neither had a majority.  

What’s a brokered convention?

A brokered convention occurs when, after the first round of voting, still no candidate has a majority of delegates. If that happens, delegates are then free to vote for whomever they want.

When was the last brokered convention?

You have to go all the way back to 1952 to find a brokered convention. That year both conventions were brokered. Adlai Stevenson finally emerged as the Democratic nominee and Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican. But here again, it might happen in 2020.

Which party’s convention comes first? And when and where?

By tradition, the party that holds the White House holds its nominating convention after the party that seeks the White House. So this year, the Democratic National Convention will be July 13 through 16 in Milwaukee. The Republican National Convention will be August 24 to August 27, in Charlotte.

Are vice presidential candidates chosen or announced at the convention?

Not necessarily. Presidential nominees often announce their choice of running mates in the days or weeks leading up to the nominating conventions.

So what do we do?

Make sure you’re registered and be sure to vote – in your state primaries or caucuses, and in the general election November 3!

Impeachment Trial: The Big PictureDon’t get bogged down by the...

Impeachment Trial: The Big Picture

Don’t get bogged down by the marathon minute-by-minute coverage of the Senate impeachment trial stretching late into the night. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the complex procedural maneuvers aimed at securing a fair and open trial with witness testimony and new documents that Republicans want to prevent at all costs.

We must stay focused on the big picture.  Here are the 10 big things you need to understand about the Senate trial and the historic moment our country is in right now.

1. Trump’s attempt to get foreign powers to help him win the 2020 election is an impeachable offense. It’s precisely the sort of thing the Framers of the Constitution worried about when they created the impeachment clause. If presidents could seek foreign help winning elections, there would be no end of foreign intrusions into American sovereignty and democracy.

2. But under the impeachment clause of the Constitution, sixty-seven United States senators are needed to convict Trump. That means that even if every Democratic senator votes to oust him, twenty Republican senators would need to join them in order for Trump to be removed from office.

3. The odds that twenty Republican Senators will do so are exactly zero. Zilch.

4. That’s because there are not twenty Republican Senators with the courage and integrity to protect the Constitution and the nation from the most dangerous and demagogic president in history. Led by Midnight Mitch McConnell, Republican Senators are engaged in a concerted coverup of some of the most outrageous conduct ever committed by high-level government officials. Even so-called moderates like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney can’t be relied on to grow a spine and conduct a fair trial.

5. Why not? Because they want to keep their jobs, and they fear Trump’s sway over their voting base and his massive fundraising apparatus.

6. Trump’s overall job ratings have not changed a bit in the wake of his impeachment in the House, just as they have remained remarkably stable over the course of his presidency. In the most recent polls, 40 percent of Americans – including, importantly, 90 percent of Republican voters – approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 58 percent say they disapprove. These percentages are exactly the same as they were in September, before the House of Representatives launched its formal impeachment inquiry and voted to impeach Trump.

7. Why do 90 percent of Republican voters approve of Trump? Because he has convinced them he’s on their side and that he’s the victim of a plot orchestrated by the establishment and deep state bureaucrats to oust him.

8. How has he kept his base so dedicated? By lying constantly, casting the mainstream press as biased and untrustworthy, relying on Trump’s propaganda machine (also known as Fox News) and right-wing radio to trumpet his lies, using Twitter and Facebook to deliver those lies directly to his followers, and fomenting the “culture war” — employing deep divisions over race, guns, religion, and immigrants — to continuously feed his base.

9. Where’s the money coming from? From the American oligarchy – billionaires, CEOs, corporate executives, and the denizens of Wall Street – who are funding the Republican Party and bankrolling Trump and his propaganda machine. They’re doing this because they’re raking in billions thanks to the Trump-Republican tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Trump is already promising them more if he gets a second term. “The attitude of the business community toward the Trump Administration appears quite positive,” said Stephen Schwarzman, who runs Blackstone, the world’s largest investment fund. “We are all adjusting to his abnormal behavior,” said former White House Communications Director and Trump ally-turned-enemy, Anthony Scaramucci. “The economic strength helps their cognitive dissonance.”

10. What can the rest of us do? Vote Trump out of office this November, and convince everyone you know to do so as well. It may seem daunting, but remember: We already beat the liar-in-chief by 2.8 million votes in 2016. And the 2018 elections had the highest turnout of any midterm election since 1914 – handing House Republicans their most resounding defeat in decades. People are outraged, mobilized, and ready to keep fighting. If we come together, we will prevail.

Here’s a recent interview I did with PBS’s “Frontline” on what’s...

Here’s a recent interview I did with PBS’s “Frontline” on what’s at stake this election year, and how we got to this terrifying point in American history. Hope you find it helpful.

The Biggest Political Party in America You’ve Never Heard OfIf...

The Biggest Political Party in America You’ve Never Heard Of

If I asked you to name the biggest political party in the United States, what would be your answer? You probably have two guesses that come to mind: the Democratic party or the Republican party.Well, it’s neither.

It’s the party of Non-Voters.

Let’s look at the last presidential election: 100 million Americans who were eligible to vote in 2016 DID NOT vote. That’s a bigger number than the number who voted either for Donald Trump or for Hillary Clinton. In Michigan, for example, where the contest came down to roughly 10,000 votes, it’s plausible to say that non-voters were the ones who decided the election.

Non-voters — those Americans eligible to vote but don’t — are in effect America’s biggest political party. Unless we work to reverse this trend, they could decide the next election.

So who are these missing voters? They are Americans who are most affected by decades of a broken political system, economic inequality, and laws designed to make it harder to vote. They are people of color, young people, and people with lower incomes.

At the same time, these missing voters tend to be more progressive than most voters. For example, non-voters are more likely to support higher taxes to pay for government services, a higher minimum wage, a federal jobs guarantee, and other progressive priorities.

There are also seven million young people of color who weren’t old enough to vote in 2016 but will be 18 by the 2020 election. These voters will also be critical to mobilize.

All of which means that voter turnout will determine our future. These non-voters are potential voters, and recent elections with record turnout show that we’re headed in the right direction.

The key question is how to get even more of them to the polls. Four steps:

1. Make it easier to vote, not harder. Some states have enacted laws to suppress the votes of people of color and young people, such as requiring an ID, reducing the number of polling places in Democratic districts, and purging voter rolls. These tactics must be ended. The Voting Rights Act, which for decades kept some of the worst practices in check until major provisions were struck down by the Supreme Court, must be restored.

And we need to make it easier to vote by making Election Day a federal holiday; enacting Automatic Voter Registration, for example when people turn 18; and voting by mail.

2. Mobilize young voters. They’re a huge potential voting block. In the 2018 midterm elections, 36 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 cast ballots, shattering turnout records from the past quarter-century and contributing to major Democratic victories across the country

3. Inspire enthusiasm and grassroots energy around big ideas and bold policies, not milquetoast, consultant-driven half-measures. Look at Stacey Abrams’s campaign in 2018. Even though she didn’t win, Abrams ran a bold campaign and worked to turn out Democratic voters that had largely been ignored in the red state of Georgia. As a result, Abrams garnered more votes — 1.9 million — than any other Democrat running for any office in the history of the state, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter.

4. Personally encourage others to vote. Make sure they know how to register, and when and where to vote. Tell them to be a voter.

Rebuilding America starts with the simple act of voting. If we can activate even a fraction of those 100 million non-voters, we can restore American democracy and make our economy and our democracy work for the many rather than the few.

This is why it’s so important for you to vote – and urge everyone you know to vote, too.

Abuses of Power in Trumpworld and Davos

As the Senate debates Donald Trump’s
future, chief executives, financiers and politicians have...