Guest Columns

The Endgame of 2016′s Anti-Establishment Politics

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By Robert Reich – Will Bernie Sanders’s supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination? Likewise, if Donald Trump is denied the Republican nomination, will his supporters back whoever gets the Republican nod? If 2008 is any guide, the answer is unambiguously yes to both. About 90 percent of people who backed Hillary…

Right-to-Lifers Vote to Kill Children and Kidney Patients

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By David Underhill – MOBILE, Ala. – The fetus is the new Jerusalem. Medieval crusaders fancied they were on a divine mission when they marched toward the Holy City to save it from the Muslim infestation. The sanctity of this quest gave them permission to do whatever advanced toward the goal. Rape and plunder propelled…

Voting is a Right: Stop Republican Voter Suppression

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By Robert Reich – A crowning achievement of the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech, was pushing through the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Recognizing the history of racist attempts to prevent black people from voting, that federal law forced a number of southern…

Why The Major Mainstream Media Marginalize Bernie Sanders

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By Robert Reich – “Bernie is doing well but he can’t possibly win the nomination,” a friend told me for what seemed like the thousandth time, attaching an article from one of the nation’s leading newspapers showing how far behind Bernie remains in delegates. Wait a minute. Sanders won 78 percent of the vote in…

Blowing the Biggest Political Story of the Past 50 Years

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By Neal Gabler – Ah, the crescendo of complaint! The Republican establishment and the mainstream media, working hand in hand in their unprecedented, non-stop assault on the “short-fingered vulgarian” named Donald Trump, would have you believe that Trump augurs the destruction of the Republican Party. Former Reagan speechwriter and now Wall Street Journal/CBS pundit Peggy…

Donald Trump: An American Fascist?

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By Robert Reich – I’ve been reluctant to use the “f” word to describe Donald Trump because it’s especially harsh, and it’s too often used carelessly. But Trump has finally reached a point where parallels between his presidential campaign and the fascists of the first half of the 20th century – lurid figures such as…

The Media Enabled Donald Trump by Destroying Politics First

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The mainstream media is to blame for Donald Trump’s rise, but not for the reasons most people think – By Neal Gabler – It is more than a little ironic that the Republican Establishment and the mainstream media are both now in full panic mode over the possibility of Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination.…

Americans Are in Rebellion and the Political Establishment is Blind

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By Robert Reich – Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred. A 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist, who wasn’t even a Democrat until recently, has come within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed…

Ted Cruz is Even More Dangerous than Donald Trump

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By Robert Reich – 1. Cruz is more fanatical. Sure, Trump is a bully and bigot, but he doesn’t hew to any sharp ideological line. Cruz is a fierce ideologue: He denies the existence of man-made climate change, rejects same-sex marriage, wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, believes the 2nd amendment guarantees everyone a…

Bernie’s Proposals Would Spur Economic Growth

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By Robert Reich – A few days ago, Neel Kashkari – now president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, who was the senior Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations helping to save the big Wall Street banks – said “I believe the biggest banks are still too big to…

South Carolina Could Be the End of the Road for Jeb Bush

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By Eugene Robinson – The South Carolina Republican primary may well be Jeb Bush’s last stand. He described the situation — polls show him trailing badly, following weak performances in Iowa and New Hampshire — in typical Bushian syntax: “It’s all been decided, apparently,” he harrumphed this week in Summerville, a town near Charleston. “The…

The Day the Republican Party Died

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By Robert Reich – I’m writing to you today to announce the death of the Republican Party. It is no longer a living, vital, animate organization. It died in 2016. RIP. It has been replaced by warring tribes: Evangelicals opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and science. Libertarians opposed to any government constraint on private behavior.…

It Takes a Movement to Change America

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By Robert Reich – In 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama promised progressive change if elected President, his primary opponent, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, derided him. “The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she…

Zika Outbreak Highlights America’s Vulnerabilities

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By Edgar Wilson – America has another chance to learn from developing regions threatened by a dangerous virus. The mosquito-borne Zika virus, normally found across central Africa and Southeast Asia, has been turning up in more and more countries throughout the Americas, with its biggest footprint in Brazil. In roughly three-quarters of all cases, Zika…

Michael Moore Endorses Bernie Sanders for President

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By Michael Moore – When I was a child, they said there was no way this majority-Protestant country of ours would ever elect a Catholic as president. And then John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president. The next decade, they said America would not elect a president from the Deep South. The last person to do…

The Most Pragmatic Way to Fix American Democracy

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By Robert Reich – The Democratic contest has repeatedly been characterized as a choice between Hillary Clinton’s “pragmatism” and Bernie Sanders’s “idealism” – with the not-so-subtle message that realists choose pragmatism over idealism. But this way of framing the choice ignores the biggest reality of all: the unprecedented, and increasing, concentration of income, wealth and…

Living in a Political Mudslide in Alabama

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By Walter Simon – We seem to be a society living in denial when it comes to a lot of things. It’s as if we are sitting there eating and drinking at a downtown restaurant, lost in the enjoyment of the immediate surroundings, but since our world is obviously become like the Twilight Zone we…