The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

We’ve gone through the shameful first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and of the refusal of 147 members of Congress (all Republicans) to certify all the electors from states that voted for Biden, on the basis of no evidence of fraud. So far, no political figure has been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. We’ve seen 34 voter-suppression bills enacted by 19 Republican state legislatures; at least 8 give state legislatures the power to disregard election outcomes. More than 400 additional voter suppression measures are now being prepared. And we are now witnessing a struggle in the Senate to reform the filibuster so that voting rights legislation can be enacted. All of which raises a basic question: Is there still a common good? I was at the impressionable age of fourteen when I heard John F. Kennedy urge us not to ask what America can do for us but what we can do for America. Seven years later I took a job as a summer intern in the Senate office of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy. It was not a glamorous job, to say the least. I felt lucky when I was asked to run his signature machine. But I told myself that in a very tiny way I was doing something for the good of the country.That was more than a half century ago. I wish I could say America is a better place now than it was then. Surely our lives are more convenient. Fifty years ago there were no cash machines or smart phones, and I wrote my first book on a typewriter. As individuals, we are as kind and generous as ever. We volunteer in our communities, donate, and help one another. We pitch in during natural disasters and emergencies. We come to the aid of individuals in need. We are a more inclusive society, in that Black people, LGBTQ people, and women have legal rights they didn’t have a half century ago. Yet our civic life—as citizens in our democracy, participants in our economy, managers or employees of companies, and members or leaders of organizations—seems to have sharply deteriorated. What we have lost is a sense of our connectedness to each other and to our ideals—the America that John F. Kennedy asked that we contribute to.Starting in the late 1970s, Americans began talking less about the common good and more about self-aggrandizement. The shift is the hallmark of modern America: From the “Greatest Generation” to the “Me Generation,” from “we’re all in it together” to “you’re on your own.” In 1977, motivational speaker Robert Ringer wrote a book that reached the top of The New York Times bestseller list entitled Looking Out for # 1. It extolled the virtues of selfishness to a wide and enthusiastic audience. The 1987 film Wall Street epitomized the new ethos in the character Gordon Gekko and his signature line, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”The last five decades have also been marked by growing cynicism and distrust toward all of the basic institutions of American society. There is a wide and pervasive sense that the system as a whole is no longer working as it should. Racism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance are on the rise. A growing number of Americans feel neglected and powerless. Some are poor, or Black or Latino. Others are white and have been on a downward economic escalator for years. Some have been seduced by demagogues and conspiracy theorists. Thanks for subscribing to my letter. If you’d like to support this effort and be part of the conversation, please consider a paid or gift subscription. Is there a common good that still binds us together as Americans? Yes, and it’s not the whiteness of our skin, or our adherence to Christianity, or the fact that we were born in the United States. We’re bound together by the ideals and principles we share, and the mutual obligations those principles entail.After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare”—not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.” During the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, Americans faced common perils that required us to work together for the common good. That good was echoed in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear. The common good animated many of us – both white and Black Americans—to fight for civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s. It inspired America to create the largest and most comprehensive system of public education the world had ever seen. And it moved many of us to act against the injustice of the Vietnam War, and others of us to serve bravely in that besotted conflict.Americans sharply disagree about exactly what we want for America or for the world. But if we are to participate in the same society we must agree on how we deal with our disagreements, our obligations under the law, and our commitment to democracy. It’s our agreement to these principles that connects us, not agreement about where these principles lead. Some of us may want to prohibit abortions because we believe life begins at conception; others of us believe individuals should have the right to determine what happens to their bodies. Some of us want stricter environmental protections; others, more lenient. We are free to take any particular position on these and any other issues. But as political equals in this democracy, we are bound to accept the outcomes even if we dislike them. Our central obligation as citizens is to preserve, fortify, and protect our democratic form of government. We must defend the right to vote and ensure that more citizens are heard, not fewer. We must require that presidents be elected by the will of the people, and prevent political parties and state legislatures from disregarding the popular vote. We must get big money out of politics so the moneyed interests don’t have more political power than the rest of us. Democracy doesn’t require us to agree. It requires us to agree only on preserving and protecting democracy. This meta-agreement is the essence of the common good. Those now attacking American democracy are attacking the common good that binds us together. They are attacking America. We must join together — progressives and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, inhabitants of blue states and of red states, business leaders as well as leaders of nonprofits and of the public sector — to rescue American democracy from those who now seek to destroy it. There is no time to waste. Your thoughts? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

I sometimes hear from people who tell me they’ve been fighting for years for the common good — for social justice, for a stronger democracy, for a sustainable environment — but they can’t do it any longer. They’re burnt out. “I’m done,” one of my former students wrote me last week. She’s been in the trenches for more than three years at a nonprofit dedicated to environmental justice, putting in 10 to 12-hour days, often six and sometimes seven days a week. “Maybe I’ve made a small difference,” she writes, “but it’s not worth it. It’s taken a terrible a toll on me. I have to get a life.” I understand. Regressive forces are huge and powerful. The moneyed interests have almost unlimited resources. The rightwing anti-social media have seemingly unlimited reach. Racism, xenophobia and outright lies seem to be growing louder. In the short term — even over three or four years — positive social change can appear an impossible task. The road is very long, and it’s filled with potholes. But almost nothing worth doing can get done in the short term. Even under the most favorable circumstances, social change never occurs quickly.One of my dearest and oldest friends, Fred Wertheimer, has been fighting for voting rights and campaign finance reform for over forty years. When I spoke to him recently, he told me that he thought there was a good chance that senate Democrats would support the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act, and carve out a voting-rights exception to the filibuster. Thanks for subscribing to my letter on the system. If you’d like to support this effort (and join the conversation) please consider a paid or gift subscription. I hope Fred is right, but what astonishes me about Fred is his tenacity. He keeps fighting no matter what. If senate Democrats fail, Fred will just keep fighting. Almost thirty years ago, in the months before Bill Clinton moved into the White House, Fred asked me if Clinton was committed to reforming campaign-finance laws. I assured Fred he was, because Clinton told me so. Soon after the election, when I pressed the president-elect about it, he told me to check in with the then Democratic Speaker of the House, Tom Foley. Foley’s response? “It will never happen.”I expected Fred to be dismayed. To the contrary, he said “Well, we have more work to do.” Fred didn’t see it as a defeat. He saw it for what it was — a clear message that those who wanted campaign finance reform had more work to do before it could become a reality. The history of social reform — women’s suffrage, civil rights, labor rights, LBGTQ rights, and so on — confirms the central importance of tenacity.A few years ago I spoke with Stacey Abrams, who had just lost her bid to be Georgia’s governor to Republican Brian Kemp, then Georgia’s secretary of state. Like Fred, Abrams is one of the most tenacious people I’ve ever met. She served in the Georgia legislature for ten years. She saw voter suppression first-hand. When Kemp was Georgia’s secretary of state, he oversaw the purge of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. Yet Abram’s defeat in that election didn’t seem to faze her. She promptly turned to organizing voters. “I’m optimistic,” she said. “We’re going to win.” (Her organizing paid off in Democrats’ big wins in Georgia in 2020. Abrams recently announced she’ll be running for governor in 2022.)How do reformers maintain their strength and commitment over so many years? Continuous activism is exhausting. Burnout is a constant hazard. What’s the secret to their tenacity? I can think of three:First, they pace themselves. They don’t put in ten-hour days, six or seven days a week, as did my former student. Most put in normal working days. They take weekends and holidays off. They understand they’re in a marathon which they can’t possibly win if they go all out, continuously. They’re patient with themselves. Second, they’re part of a team or group that helps one another. They trade off the hardest work among themselves so no single member of the group has to do it continuously. They buoy each other’s spirits. They share jokes and humorous anecdotes. They watch out for each other’s mental and physical health. Third, they find opportunities to celebrate victories, no matter how small. Big victories are rare, but small ones — getting a particular city to enact a progressive measure, convincing some holdouts to join the movement, getting a favorable news story — do occur. And when they do, those who are in it for the long haul celebrate them, boosting everyone’s morale and illustrating the possibilities for larger victories. Adam Hochschild’s brilliant and inspiring book, Bury the Chains relates the true story of twelve people (a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and nine others united by their hatred of slavery) who in early 1787 came together in a London printing shop and began a grass-roots movement to end the British slave trade. It seemed impossible at the time. The slave trade was hugely profitable. The British establishment was getting rich off it. But for the next thirty years, the leaders of that movement stuck with it. Finally, in 1807, legislation was passed in both the Commons and the Lords bringing an end to Britain's involvement in the trade. The bill received royal assent in March and the trade was made illegal from May 1, 1807.How did they do it? Not only did they pioneer a variety of techniques that have been adopted by social movements ever since (from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements), but they found ways to sustain themselves: They paced themselves for the long haul. They helped one another along the way. And they celebrated even small victories. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,The words “anniversary” or “commemoration” do not appropriately characterize this day. What occurred a year ago is nothing to be memorialized, nothing to glorify. What happened on January 6, 2021 was frightening and shameful. That date shall live in infamy — like December 7, 1941 and 9/11. The difference is that on those days the United States was attacked by foreign powers, whereas on this date the United States was attacked by Americans — some waving American flags, most of them loyal to the man who had lost the presidential reelection the previous November 3 but who did not concede his loss and continues to argue the presidency was stolen from him.Besides paying our respects to the families of the five people who lost their lives in the attack on the Capitol, as well as to those who still bear its psychological scars — Capitol police officers, and members of congress who remain traumatized by what occurred — it is also important to acknowledge the trauma to our nation. The trauma continues to some extent in each of us today. The perpetrators must be held accountable. Trump must be held accountable. Members of congress who conspired with him must be held accountable. The only way we as a nation can process this trauma — gain some finality and closure on what occurred a year ago today — is to ensure that those who attacked the Capitol and those who instigated the attack bear full responsibility for their actions. And we must ensure that nothing like this ever occurs again. For those of you who may be interested, I held a live event this morning on social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — ironically, the same anti-social media on which the attack was planned and provoked) to make a few comments and answer your questions. The recording is below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,With Trump’s Big Lie largely unchallenged by Republican lawmakers, the Republican Party has swung almost entirely into the Trump camp. Over 70 percent of registered Republicans believe Trump won the 2020 election. Trump has worked to purge from the state and national party anyone he considers insufficiently loyal to him. His closest supporters have become so extreme that they are openly supporting authoritarianism and talking of Democrats as “vermin.” Meanwhile, more than a third of Americans now say violent action against the government is sometimes justified — considerably more than in past polls dating back more than two decades. But a plurality of the people who feel this way are Republicans. Only 23 percent of Democrats think violence is sometimes justified, while 40 percent of Republicans say it is. Some fear a violent clash in the 2024 election if Trump runs and loses. Three former top generals recently warned in the Washington Post of their increasing concern about “the potential for lethal chaos inside our military, which would put all Americans at severe risk.” Thanks for subscribing to my letter on the system. If you’d like to support this effort (and be part of the discussion) please consider a paid or gift subscription. Talk of potential civil war can be dangerous and distracting. As Fintan O’Toole recently wrote in The Atlantic, in a critique of a new book “The Next Civil War” by the Canadian novelist and cultural critic Stephen Marche, such prophecies can be self-fulfilling and corrosive, making people more fearful of one another. They also distract attention from chronic but less spectacular problems the country faces. Even without a violent civil war, the chasm separating red and blue America has become so wide that the question arises: Can we continue to inhabit the same nation? **Let me thank all of you for your extremely thoughtful comments. I’ll offer a few thoughts of my own at this point, take your questions, and respond to your comments. First, I don’t think it will come to civil war. Our governing institutions are still strong. Most of our media is still responsible, in terms of reporting facts. Most of our political, nonprofit, and business leaders are doing their jobs as best they can. Even careless talk about civil war can be dangerous and destructive.But I do think we are in a civic crisis. Trump is the symptom. The underlying cause is that many Americans — mainly those without college degrees and living in the heartland — have been abandoned. The bottom 10 percent by income is still struggling but by-in-large are better off than they were 40 years ago. But the 40 percent just above them have been losing ground. That has made them susceptible to someone like Trump — claiming to be an anti-establishment “strongman” who can turn their despair and humiliation into hope and pride, even though he is pure bombast and narcissism. Why hasn’t the Democratic Party responded better to the needs of the working class? Even before it went on life support, “Build Back Better” had been whittled down to the point where it would do little or nothing for the bottom half. I’m old enough to remember when the Democratic Party attracted those with less education and the Republican Party attracted those with more. Today, people with less education vote for Republicans and those with more vote for Democrats. The Democratic Party has gone from being a worker party to a party of intellectual and professional elites. Since the Republican Party continues to cater to the needs and wants of business on economic policy, this has left millions of working people without any effective political voice. Hence, policies that would change the structure of power are opposed by the likes of Joe Manchin, the senior Democratic senator from West Virginia. We won’t have a civil war, but we are in imminent danger of losing our democracy to a dangerous alliance of big business oligarchs, on the one hand, and Trump-like populist-fascists on the other. To me, that’s the fight ahead of us — to foster a countervailing alliance of the poor, working class, and middle class that will make our democracy and economy work for them as well. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Last week I suggested that Trump maintains a hold on a large fraction of America because he fills a void created by a system that has left them behind. I followed with the question raised by Frank Capra’s iconic film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” in which the greedy Mr. Potter tries to take over Bedford Falls: Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything?We’re well on the way to the Potterizing of America. To take one example, the expanded child tax credit payments will end next week. (Biden’s original “Build Back Better” package had extended it, but the package is on life support in the Senate.) Republican critics, including Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, claim that the child tax credit has contributed to inflation by giving people more money to spend when the supply chain is already strained. “Moderate” Democrats, like Joe Manchin, think it’s too expensive. Rubbish. The benefit is tiny compared with the economy. Yet its payments have reduced child poverty by nearly 30 percent and have helped the working class. They’ve reduced hunger and lowered financial stress, especially in rural states that received the most money per capita (such as Missouri and West Virginia). Families spent the money on essentials like groceries and stashed some away for emergency savings. Thanks for subscribing to my letter on the system. Please consider supporting this effort through a paid or gift subscription. Others (including a few prominent economists like Larry Summers) blame inflation on the government’s pandemic spending, overall. In yesterday’s New York Times, Neil Irwin wrote that because “the government tried overheating the economy” we now have “soaring prices and many goods in short supply. Inflation has reached its highest levels in four decades.”This misses the point. Expanded unemployment benefits ended in September (earlier in some states) and the last round of stimulus payments went out last spring. The spending was a great success story — keeping millions of Americans from falling into poverty. And it hasn’t been the major cause of inflation. Still others (CEOs and business groups) blame inflation on wage increases. This is pure rubbish. Price increases are now running at 6.8 percent annually but wages are growing only between 3-4 percent. So real wages (what those wages can actually purchase) are actually declining for most Americans. This is why programs like the child tax credit and other government assistance are so important. The biggest single reason prices are rising is the concentration of the American economy into the hands of a few corporate giants with the power to raise prices. To be sure, supply bottlenecks have raised the prices corporations pay for some raw materials and components. But here’s the most important thing: Instead of absorbing these costs, corporations are passing them on to customers in the form of higher prices. This is because most large corporations face little or no competition. If corporations in the same industry were competing vigorously against each other, they’d keep their prices as low as possible so as not to lose customers. They’d try to avoid passing increased costs to consumers in higher prices, for fear of losing customers to competitors that don’t raise prices. They’d absorb the costs, and their profits would fall. The opposite is occurring. Corporations are raising prices even as they rake in record profits. Profit margins at large corporations are now at a 70-year high. Take a look at the following chart (from Bloomberg):Big corporations face so little competition they can raise prices with impunity. They simply coordinate their prices increases with the handful of other big corporations in the same industry, who are happy to oblige. That way, all of them stay highly profitable. Wall Street knows exactly what’s going on. Big investors are pouring money into corporations with the power to raise prices. “What we really want to find are companies with pricing power,” Giorgio Caputo, senior portfolio manager at J O Hambro Capital Management told Bloomberg. “In an inflationary environment, that’s the gift that keeps on giving because companies can pass along their pricing on the way up, and don’t necessarily need to get it back on the way down” [emphasis added].The underlying problem isn’t inflation per se. It's lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits. (Matt Stoller, who has an excellent Substack on monopolization, calculates that 60 percent of the increase in inflation is going to corporate profits.)Blaming the child tax credit or pandemic assistance or wage increases is a cruel ruse that disguises what’s really going on. This is what I mean when I say America has been Potterized: People at the top — top corporate executives and big investors — are doing better than ever. Everyone else is being squeezed. What should be done about all of this? For one thing, raise taxes on big corporations and the wealthy in order to finance all sorts of supports and public investments needed by the majority of Americans (such as the expanded child tax credit). At the very least, repeal the Trump tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy. But wait. Didn’t we just try to do this? Yes, and not even a Congress controlled by Democrats could get it done. Why not? Because in Potterized America, big corporations and the super-wealthy not only have the power to raise prices. They also have the power to get Congress to cut their taxes — and keep them cut. Your thoughts? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Before we turn to what I’m calling the "Potterizing” of America (the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few at the very top), we need to deal with one of its shameful consequences that will be front and center this week: accountability for Trump’s ongoing attempted coup and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Thursday marks the first anniversary of that attack. Last Wednesday I discussed four truths underlying the attack: (1) Trump incited it, (2) it culminated two months of his attempted coup, (3) his attempted coup continues to this day, and (4) he and his accomplices must be held accountable -- and we must also respond to the reasons why so many Americans continue to support him and his Big Lie.As Congress returns and the anniversary of the attack comes into view, the necessity of accountability presents itself in two forms. Democrats can and must act on both. The first is voting rights. The Senate reconvenes today. Voting rights is the most important issue before it, considering that Republican-dominated states have used Trump’s Big Lie to justify a raft of measures to restrict voting and give their legislatures greater control over the administration of elections. More such measures are on the way. The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act, both now before the Senate, are critical to protecting American democracy from these and other incursions. But because no senate Republican supports these bills, they can be passed only if senate Democrats change the filibuster rule. One way (which even Joe Manchin seems receptive to) would be to carve out an exception for voting rights bills so they can be enacted by a simple majority. Changing the filibuster is the first step to protecting voting rights and our democracy. Senate Democrats must take this step right away. Thanks for subscribing to my letter about the system. If you’d like to support this effort, please consider a paid or gift subscription. The other form of accountability is criminal responsibility for the attempted coup and the attack on the Capitol. The Justice Department has already charged more than 700 people with participating in the attack. Although no case has yet gone to trial, many of the defendants have pleaded guilty and received sentences from probation to 41 months in prison.Yet so far, the Department has charged no political figure, including Trump himself. To be sure, the Watergate scandal didn’t result in significant prosecutions and convictions for two years after the break-in. But if Republicans gain a majority in the House next November, you can bet they’ll close down the House’s January 6 committee now investigating the attack. The critical political actors at this point are:Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair. Cheney is focused squarely on Trump’s potential crimes. Yesterday she said of Trump: “Any man…who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States is clearly unfit for future office, clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.” She went on to warn her Republican colleagues that they “can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot be both.”Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff. After he failed to appear before the committee, Congress voted to hold him in contempt and referred him to the Justice Department for prosecution. As of today, the grand jury impaneled by the Department has not indicted Meadows (note that his is the same crime for which Trump adviser Steve Bannon was indicted).Former assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark. His testimony could also implicate Trump. Recall that when top Justice Department officials told Trump that no widespread fraud contributed to President Joe Biden’s win, Trump reportedly responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me” and his allies in Congress. Clark apparently took Trump up on his request, drafting a letter giving Georgia elections officials a road map to overturn the election’s results. When Clark appeared before the House committee about this, he refused to answer questions and has since missed several appearance dates (allegedly because of unspecified health issues).Republican congressman Scott Perry. He reportedly assisted Trump in trying to install Clark as attorney general. (Perry and Meadows seem to have communicated via encrypted apps, presumably to hide what they were talking about.) Perry has refused the committee’s request for documents and testimony concerning the run-up to the attack on the Capitol, asserting that the committee is an “illegitimate entity.” (Hello? Multiple trial and appellate courts have ruled that the committee is doing precisely what it is authorized to do.)Republican congressman Jim Jordan. When the Jan. 6 committee announced it was seeking testimony from Jordan about his conversations with Trump on the day of the Capitol attack, Jordan also refused, alleging that the committee “altered” punctuation in a text message Jordan had sent to Meadows urging former Vice President Mike Pence to disregard Electoral College votes Pence deemed unconstitutional. (Rubbish. An allegation of altered punctuation is not a defense against a congressional subpoena.) Attorney General Merrick Garland. Responsibility for prosecuting Trump falls to Attorney General Merrick Garland. It would be good to know what he’s up to. Is he simply being extra careful in putting together a case against Trump? Is he waiting until the House committee makes its report? Or is he putting a brake on all of this so as not to further enflame Trump supporters? Trump, meanwhile, has asked the Supreme Court to halt release of his White House records to the House select committee. But the House committee will forge on. My friends, the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol will not be the occasion it should be: a day when the nation comes together to repudiate Trump and his co-conspirators whose treacherous acts led to it. That’s because Trump has divided America with his big lie. A new ABC/Ipsos poll shows that although 65 percent of Americans believe President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was legitimate, 71 percent of Republicans believe Trump’s false claims that he is the rightful winner. The division in America over Trump’s attempted coup and the attack has no parallel in our nation’s history since the Civil War. Yet if we do not strengthen voting rights, and if Trump and his accomplices are not held criminally accountable, we are inviting another attempted coup. Next time, it could succeed.Your thoughts? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Happy new year. I hope it’s a safe and healthy one for you and your family. Over the last few days I’ve shared with you some facts and thoughts about Trump’s continuing attempted coup. I’ve also suggested that an answer to it (and to Trumpism in general) can be found in Frank Capra’s 1946 iconic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the central question it posed: Do we join together, or let the Mr. Potters of America own and run everything?Today, the first of 2022, struck me as an appropriate one to focus on how and why America came to be Potterized.It’s not possible to change the future without understanding the past. The American system isn’t just politics or “the market” as we now experience it. It’s an evolving set of laws, rules, and norms that reflect a shifting structure of power. If we want to alter the road we’re on (and we must), we need to see how we got on it. If we want to alter the current structure of power (and we must), we have to realize how it came to be. Thank you for subscribing to this letter about the system. If you’d like to support this work, please consider a paid or a gift subscription. Most importantly, we need to see why we made a giant U-turn from the road we were on during the first three decades after World War II — when America was on the way to building a robust democracy and the biggest middle class the world had ever seen, expanding civil rights and voting rights and creating a more inclusive society — to the road that led us to Trump. If we figure out how we got from “It’s a Wonderful Life” of 1946 to the Pottersvilles that so many Americans are inhabiting in 2022, we have a fighting chance of getting back on the right road. My personal journey — and the questions that have dogged me for years — parallels this larger one. I was born in 1946, the same year “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s during civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, and a burgeoning if not wild-eyed youthful optimism about the future. I witnessed the U-turn. I saw the system change, but didn’t know why. In the 1970s, I represented the United States before the Supreme Court, and then I ran the policy team in the Federal Trade Commission. In the 1980s, I watched and chronicled what I saw happening under Reagan and Bush 1, and I taught brilliant students what I thought they needed to know about the system. In the 1990s, I advised Bill Clinton when he was a candidate for president, then headed his economic transition team and became his Secretary of Labor. Afterwards, I taught another group of terrific students. I advised Barack Obama. When Trump was elected, I became a staunch critic. Through it all, I kept asking myself: why is this happening? How did we get on the wrong road? What can be done? I have some preliminary answers that I’ll be sharing with you over the next weeks and months. For now, here’s a video that was my first attempt to answer these questions as simply as I could. Please have a look. I’m interested in your thoughts and comments. By the way, a number of you have asked for a still of “The Big Picture.” Here it is: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

My post yesterday on the real lesson of January 6 provoked a great discussion (many thanks to those of you who participated). It also prompted me to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was released 75 years ago this month. When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movie could have been produced by some propaganda bureau of the government that had been told to create a white-washed (and white) version of the United States. But in more recent years I’ve come around. As America has moved closer to being an oligarchy — with staggering inequalities of income, wealth, and power not seen in over a century — and closer to Trumpian neofascism (the two moves are connected), “It’s a Wonderful Life” speaks to what’s gone wrong and what must be done to make it right. As you probably know (and if you don’t, this weekend would be a good time to watch it), the movie’s central conflict is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart). Potter is a greedy and cruel banker. George is the generous and honorable head of Bedford Fall’s building-and-loan — the one entity standing in the way of Potter’s total domination of the town. When George accidentally loses some deposits that fall into the hands of Potter, Potter sees an opportunity to ruin George. This brings George to the bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless — before a guardian angel’s counsel turns him homeward.It’s two radically opposed versions of America. In Potter’s social-Darwinist view, people compete with one another for resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they’ve outrun everyone else in that competitive race. After the death of George’s father, who founded the building-and-loan, Potter moves to dissolve it — claiming George’s father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.” In George’s view, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” His father helped them build homes on credit so they could afford a decent life. “People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they’re cattle.”When George contemplates ending it all, his guardian angel shows him how bleak Bedford Falls would be had George never lived — poor, fearful, and dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped (virtually the entire town) pitch in to bail out George and his building-and-loan. It’s a cartoon, of course — but a cartoon that’s fast becoming a reality in America. Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything? Soon after “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released, the FBI considered it evidence of Communist Party infiltration of the film industry. The FBI’s Los Angeles field office — using a report by an ad-hoc group that included Fountainhead writer and future Trump pin-up girl Ayn Rand — warned that the movie represented “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. This … is a common trick used by Communists.” The FBI report compared “It’s a Wonderful Life” to a Soviet film, and alleged that Frank Capra was “associated with left-wing groups” and that screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were “very close to known Communists.”This was all rubbish, of course — and a prelude to the Red Scare led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of Hollywood, the State Department, and even the US Army. The movie was also prelude to modern Republican ideology. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have used Potter-like social Darwinism to justify everything tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, and cutbacks in social safety nets. Rand herself became a hero to many in the Trump administration. Above all, Reagan Republicans, CEOs, and Trumpers have used the strategy of “divide-and-conquer” to generate division among Americans (a kind of political social-Darwinism). That way, Americans stay angry and suspicious of one another, and don’t look upward to see where all the money and power have gone. And won’t join together to claim it back. What would Republicans say about “It’s a Wonderful Life” if it were released today? They’d probably call it socialist rather than communist, but it would make them squirm all the same — especially given the eery similarity between Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter and you know who. Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter on power, politics, and the real economy. If you’d like to support this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or offering a gift subscription. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

I’m sorry to intrude on your holiday week with this, but I want you to be prepared for what’s to come next week. January 6 will be the first anniversary of one of the most shameful days in American history. On that date in 2021, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists to Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress. Roughly 140 officers were injured in the attack. Five people died that day. But even now, almost a year later, Americans remain confused and divided about the significance of what occurred. Let me offer four basic truths:1. Trump incited the attack on the Capitol. For weeks before the attack, Trump had been urging his supporters to come to Washington for a “Save America March” on January 6, when Congress was to ceremonially count the electoral votes of Joe Biden’s win. Without any basis in fact or law (60 federal courts as well as the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security concluded that there was no evidence of substantial fraud), Trump repeatedly asserted he had won the 2020 election and Biden had lost it. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted on December 19. Then on December 26: “See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow.” On December 30: “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” On January 1: “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C. will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”At a rally just before the violence, Trump repeated his falsehoods about how the election was stolen. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.” He told the crowd that Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back, respectful of everyone — “including bad people.” But, he said, “we’re going to have to fight much harder…. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong…. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." He then told the crowd that “different rules” applied to them. “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike [Pence] has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] and the stupid people that he’s listening to.” Then he dispatched the crowd to the Capitol as the electoral count was about to start. The attack on the Capitol came immediately after. 2. The events of January 6 capped two months during which Trump sought to reverse the outcome of the election. Shortly after the election, Trump summoned to the White House Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Michigan, to inquire about how they might alter the election results. He even called two local canvassing board officials in Wayne County, Michigan’s most populous county and one that overwhelmingly favored Biden.He phoned Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes,” according to a recording of that conversation, adding “the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.” He suggested that Georgia’s secretary of state would be criminally prosecuted if he did not do as Trump told him. “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”He pressed the acting US attorney general and deputy attorney general to declare the election fraudulent. When the deputy said the department had found no evidence of widespread fraud and warned that it had no power to change the outcome of the election, Trump replied “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to Trump’s congressional allies. Trump and his allies continued to harangue the attorney general and top Justice Department officials nearly every day until January 6. Trump plotted with an assistant attorney general to oust the acting attorney general and pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. But Trump ultimately decided against it after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.Presumably, more details of Trump’s attempted coup will emerge after the House Select Committee on January 6 gathers more evidence and deposes more witnesses. 3. Trump’s attempted coup continues to this day. Trump still refuses to concede the election and continues to assert it was stolen. He presides over a network of loyalists and allies who have sought to overturn the election (and erode public confidence in it) by mounting partisan state “audits” and escalating attacks on state election officials. When asked recently about the fraudulent claims and increasingly incendiary rhetoric, a Trump spokeswoman said that the former president “supports any patriotic American who dedicates their time and effort to exposing the rigged 2020 Presidential Election.”Last week, Trump announced he will be hosting a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on January 6. “Remember,” he said in the announcement “the insurrection took place on November 3rd. It was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th." (Reminder: they were armed.) Trump then referred to the House investigation: "Why isn't the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?" Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter on power, politics and the real economy. If you’d like to support this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and sending a gift subscription. He went on to castigate "Rinos," presumably referring to his opponents within the party, such as Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sit on the January 6 committee. "In many ways a Rino is worse than a Radical Left Democrat," Trump said, "because you don't know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country.” He added, “the good news is there are fewer and fewer RINOs left as we elect strong Patriots who love America.” Trump has endorsed a primary challenger to Cheney, while Kinzinger will leave Congress at the next election. Trump and other Republicans have also moved to punish 13 House Republicans who bucked party leadership and voted for a bipartisan infrastructure bill in November.4. All of this reveals an underlying problem in America.Trump and his co-conspirators must be held accountable, of course. Hopefully, the Select Committee’s report will be used by the Justice Department in criminal prosecutions of Trump and his accomplices.But this in itself will not solve the underlying problem. A belligerent and narcissistic authoritarian has gained a powerful hold over a large portion of America. As many as 60 percent of Republican voters continue to believe his lies. Many remain intensely loyal. The Republican party is close to becoming a cult whose central animating idea is that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Trump has had help, of course. Fox News hosts and Facebook groups have promoted and amplified his ravings for their own purposes. Republicans in Congress and in the states have played along.But even with this help, Trump’s attempted coup could not have gotten this far without something more basic: A substantial portion of the American population feels an anger and despair that has made them susceptible to Trump’s swagger and lies.It is too simplistic to attribute this solely to racism or xenophobia. America has harbored white supremacist and anti-immigrant sentiments since its founding. The despair Trump has channeled is more closely connected to a profound loss of identity, dignity and purpose, especially among Americans who have been left behind – without college degrees, without good jobs, in places that have been economically abandoned and disdained by much of the rest of the country. The wages of these Americans have not risen in forty years, adjusted for inflation, even though the economy is now three times larger than it was four decades ago. The norm of upward mobility has been shattered for these Americans. Through their eyes, the entire American system is now rigged against them.This part of America yearns for a strongman to deliver it from despair. Trump has filled that void. To be sure, he’s filled it with bombast, lies, paranoia, and neofascism. But he has filled it nonetheless. The challenge ahead is to fill it with a democracy and economy that work for everyone. Unless we understand and respond to this fundamental truth, we will miss the true meaning of January 6.**Do you agree? If not, what do you think is the real meaning of January 6? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

My father once said that at the 1939 World’s Fair he saw an exhibit about the future featuring “picture phones” that allowed people to talk and see each other. He predicted the gadgets would fail because users would find them awkward and unnerving.Well, that future is now — and it’s not awkward in the slightest. I just had FaceTime calls with my two sons and their families (including two wonderful daughters-in-law and a granddaughter) – one in New York, the other in Los Angeles. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to see and hear all of them. They looked relaxed. They’re enjoying the holidays. They’re safe and healthy.We’ve been exchanging text messages and regular phone calls during the holiday. But to see them — to watch and interact with them — is different. Not as good as being with them, of course, but the next best thing when family members live thousands of miles away and the pandemic makes travel difficult.Like my father, I’m a bit of a technophobe. I’m a late adapter of e-everything. When it comes to Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft, I harbor deep suspicions bordering on loathing. I hate the part of “connectivity” that threatens our autonomy and privacy and undermines our democracy.But I love the part that just moments ago allowed me to see their faces light up, watch them laugh and joke, and be there with them, even for a few minutes. My granddaughter is growing and changing so fast I almost can’t bear not being with her. And yet there she was on my phone, her eyes dancing directly into the eyes of her delighted grandfather!When my sons were her age and a bit younger, I went to Washington to join Bill Clinton’s cabinet. I missed the precious years when they were turning from youngsters to teenagers — separating from their parents and discovering their independent selves. Sure, I saw them on weekends and on holidays. But I was often preoccupied with the Nation’s Business. Had FaceTime existed then I doubt it would have made much difference. During the week I worked twelve-hour days. Over and over again I told myself the grandiose lie that the nation needed me. Yet deep down I knew they needed me more.I left the Clinton administration because the truth finally caught up with me. But by then we had only a few years left together before they went off into the world — first one, then the other. And now some two decades later they have their own families, their own responsibilities, their own lives. They live and work thousands of miles away. Even during this holiday week, their aging dad can’t be with them. A fierce pandemic continues to rip its way through the world. I sometimes wonder if I made the right decision years ago — spending those years in meetings, on the phone, traveling around the country, managing a vast bureaucracy, racing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill — instead of with them. I tell myself not to dwell on what can never be relived or retrieved, but the question lingers. All I know right now is that I miss them and my daughters-in-law and granddaughter terribly. I’m grateful to be able to share small slices of their lives, even on FaceTime. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe