How to root out Trumpism

So many of you have asked me how one of the most loathsome people in America was just reelected president that I thought you might find it helpful if I shared with you some personal history.

- Robert Reich Tribune

This may also suggest how to root out Trumpism.

In the fall of 2015, I visited Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina while researching the changing nature of work in America.

I spoke with many of the people I had first met when I was secretary of labor in the 1990s. Several brought their friends and grown children to my informal meetings, which became a kind of free-floating focus group spread across states that had once been economic powerhouses but were now economic basket cases.

With the 2016 political primaries looming, I asked my "focus groups" which candidates they found most attractive. At that time, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush were the likely Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively.

Yet almost no one I spoke with mentioned either Clinton or Bush. They talked about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, oftentimes both, as candidates they'd support for president.

When I asked why, they said Sanders or Trump would "shake things up," "make the system work again," "stop the corruption," or "end the rigging." In the 1990s, many of these people (or their parents) had expressed frustration that they weren't doing better. By 2015, that frustration had morphed into raw anger.

The people I met were furious with their employers, the federal government, and Wall Street. They were irate that they hadn't been able to save for their retirements, upset that they had no job security, indignant that their children weren't doing any better than they had at their children's age, and outraged that houses were unaffordable, schools second-rate, and everything far more expensive.

Several people I talked with had lost jobs, savings, or homes in the financial crisis of 2008 or the Great Recession that followed it. Now, most were back in jobs, but the jobs paid no more than they had two decades before in terms of purchasing power.