Robert Reich

Because we cannot put it behind us. Trump's Big Lie and all that it has provoked are still with us. If we forget what has occurred the trauma will return, perhaps in even more terrifying form.

By almost any measure, Joe Biden's first 100 days have been hugely successful. Getting millions of Americans inoculated against COVID-19 and beginning to revive the economy are central to that success.

It's understandable that the super wealthy might wish to escape the gravitational pull of the rest of us. But there's really no escape. If they're serious about survival of the species, they need to act more responsibly toward working humans here on terra firma.

America is about to revive an idea that was left for dead decades ago. It's called industrial policy, and it's at the heart of Joe Biden's plans to restructure the U.S. economy.

Corporations can and should bankroll much of what America needs. But they won't as long as corporations keep bankrolling American politicians.

Biden is excited about rebuilding America's "infrastructure," a word he uses constantly although it could be the dullest term in all of public policy.

Republicans are outraged—outraged!—at the surge of migrants at the southern border. Republicans are outraged—outraged!—at the surge of migrants at the southern border. But in fact, despite the surging hysteria from Republican ranks, there is no surge of migrants at the border.

Next Monday, Amazon faces a union vote at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. If successful, it would be Amazon's first U.S.-based union in its nearly 27-year history.

Bidenomics means giving cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone.

Biden must wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, "What the hell's the presidency for?"

What's good for Biden and the Democrats in the short run is potentially disastrous for America over the longer term. One of its two major parties is centered on a Big Lie that threatens to blow up the nation, figuratively if not literally.

Climate change, COVID, and jobs are together splitting Americans by class more profoundly than Americans are split by politics. The white working class is taking as much of a beating as most Black and Latino people.

It's no small irony that a half century after Reagan persuaded Americans that big government was the problem, Trump's demise is finally liberating America from Reaganism—and letting the richest nation on earth give its people the social support they desperately need.

The crux of the problem is Americans now occupy two separate worlds—a fact-based pro-democracy world and a Trump-based authoritarian one.

The paltry $600 billion proposal from the ten Senate Republicans should be rejected out of hand.

For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans—fueling much of the anger that opened the door to Trump in the first place.

There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.

Those who say we should "look forward" to a new administration and forget or dismiss what occurred last week are delusional.

If we can afford to bail out corporations and Wall Street, we sure as hell can afford to help people—and six other lessons we must remember from that singular year.

If no one is held accountable, norms collapse. Trump's impunity is an invitation for some future president to do even more damage to our democracy.

The returns from major public investments are huge. The costs of not making them are astronomical.

The heinous resurgence of COVID makes clear that corporations need more—not fewer—incentives to protect their workers from the virus.

As it was in the time of FDR and LBJ, power is redistributed only when those without it demand it.

Trump was not aberration. He was an inevitability, produced and promised by the same "normal" that now seems so nostalgic. We can't afford a return to the same mistakes again.

In testing times like ours, democracy depends on moral courage. Don't come looking for it at the top of the GOP.

President-elect Joe Biden and Democrats must respond not with kumbaya but by becoming the party of the rest of America.

The GOP evidently prefers continuous warfare because that's the only way it thinks it can win.

Who will win? What about 2016? The Electoral College? Late ballots? The Supreme Court? The Senate?

What's at stake is not partisan politics. It is representative government.

President Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick would have the government intervene in the most intimate aspects of personal life. But a mask mandate? Never.