Robert Reich writes:

Demonstrations against Donald Trump Trump are getting larger and louder. Good. This is absolutely essential.

But at some point we’ll need to demonstrate not just against the president but also for the United States we want.

Trump’s regressive populism – cruel, bigoted, tyrannical – must be met by a bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and shares the wealth.

We can’t simply return to the path we were on before Trump. Even then, big money was taking over our democracy and siphoning off most of the economy’s gains.

Two of the country’s most respected political scientists – professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University – analyzed 1,799 policy issues decided between 1981 and 2002. They found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Instead, lawmakers responded to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns. And “when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose.”

Notably, Gilens and Page’s research data was gathered before the supreme court opened the floodgates to big money in Citizens United. After that, the voices of typical Americans were entirely drowned. [Continue reading…]

HuffPost reports:

Throughout the era of politics dominated by President Donald Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has offered the same advice to the Democratic Party over and over again: Simply trying to stop what Trump is doing isn’t enough.

This time, though, there’s a chance the party might actually listen. As Sanders campaigns across the country, attracting tens of thousands of people at rallies in GOP-held congressional districts, the party is seeing its approval ratings slip to record lows. Combined with the mutual embrace between Trump and some of the world’s richest people, the stage is set for the 83-year-old Sanders to shape the party’s direction in an unprecedented way.

“The American people, I think, not only want resistance to Trump, but I think they want what the Democratic Party in the last many years has not given them, and that is an agenda that speaks to the needs of the working class, because it’s not good enough,” Sanders told HuffPost in an exclusive sit-down interview with HuffPost following his rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Friday.

“‘Oh, well, you know, Trump is a terrible guy,’” he continued, mimicking other critics of the president. “Fine. You know, the majority of American people understand that. What’s your alternative? Why did Trump get elected? What do you have to say to a worker today who’s making 14 bucks an hour, who can’t afford health care? Tell me what you have to say. What do you have to say to kids who would like to go to college, who can’t afford to go to college?”

Sanders’ rising influence does not mean the entire party is going to embrace his call for “Medicare for All” or free college. But it may mean even moderates take a closer look at his anti-establishment style and relentless focus on economic policy as a way to combat swing voters’ belief Democrats are too close to feckless institutions and too obsessed with culture war issues.

“We viewed people like Bernie as an outlier threat to the institutional Democratic Party, when in fact what he was talking about and is still talking about is the crossover message. And it pulls Trump voters back into the Democratic coalition,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview last month. [Continue reading…]