Interesting viewpoint courtesy of Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary,
With Bannon on way out, official Washington is jumping for joy that Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who's now running Trump's National Economic Council, along with another influential Goldman Sachs alumnus, Dina Powell, are taking over Trump's brain.
CNBC says Cohn will push “more moderate, business-friendly economic policies.”
The Washington Post says Cohn is advocating "a centrist vision." The Post goes on to describe “The growing strength of Cohn and like-minded moderates" as revealed in Trump's endorsement of government subsidies for exports, and of corporate tax cuts. Says the Post: “The president’s new positions move him much closer to the views of … mainstream Republicans and Democrats.”
In reality, Cohn, Powell, and other Wall Streeters in the Trump White House are pushing Trump closer to the views of Wall Street and big corporations – which are all too often reflected in the views of mainstream Republicans and Democrats who are dependent on the Street and big corporations for campaign money.
So as Trump's brain shifts from Bannon's white nationalism to Cohn's elite financialism, the rest of us are supposed to breathe a sigh of relief? Tax breaks for the rich and subsidies for big corporations are so much better than xenophobia? Is this the real choice we face as a nation?
Corporate America and Wall Street don’t seem to have learned a thing from what’s happened over the last tempestuous year.
Where do they think the Bannon version of Trump came from?
From the cauldron of anger and cynicism welling up from a shrinking and ever more anxious middle class.
From millions of working people so convinced the game is rigged against them they were prepared to topple everything to get real change.
From voters whipped up into a fury over tax breaks and subsidies and bailouts for those at the top – socialism for the rich – while they’ve been getting the losing end of the stick: declining wages, mass firings, less job security.
From people who during the Great Recession lost jobs, homes, and savings as Wall Street got bailed out, and not a single Wall Street executive went to jail.
The so-called “moderate” “business-friendly” “centrist” “mainstream” policies Wall Street and big corporations are pushing won’t reverse these sentiments. They'll add to them.
It is the Democrat's hour. If Democrats don’t put forward a progressive populist alternative now -- if they instead stick to their "mainstream" patrons on Wall Street and in the board rooms of big corporations -- they will have missed their moment.
And America will have missed its opportunity to see that neither white nationalism nor boundless wealth at the top can possibly reflect the way forward.
