As most Americans struggle to pay their bills and get ahead, Donald Trump glories in corruption and crime, vanity projects and gold, wars and lies and utter indifference to the needs of the people. Is it any wonder that the rage is mounting? The November midterms cannot come soon enough.
These tough and turbulent times may have an upside, though, as a growing number of Americans grasp that they want an America that serves their interests—one that treats a functioning government that serves more than billionaires and kleptocrats as a necessity. Amid this reality, the goals of progressive leaders focused on real issues that make lives better—such as addressing universal healthcare, billionaire taxation, the corrupt Supreme Court, the cost of America’s war machine—no longer look so inconceivable.
For the latest Six Questions, I spoke to Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and a former senior advisor to President Joe Biden, to explore our rattled body politic, the growing disenchantment with Trump even among those who supported him and the possibilities of real change. “America is at a boiling point with the president,” Tanden told me. That’s not all:
A spectacular aspect of the last year and a half amidst all the corruption, amidst all the, you know, cravenness and horrors we’ve seen across the board is that the president believes that his hold on working class people is so great that he can add to their burdens…They are the people who our data shows that if they have a $400 expense, it really pushed them over the edge. So these are people who are really struggling to make ends meet…A lot of people sort of took a chance on a strong man that are now seeing that—through his own policies—is making their life harder and harder.
I hope you’ll take the time to listen to our conversation if you missed the live stream. Tanden may have more belief in moderate leaders than I do these days, but you’ll find her perspective useful as you contemplate the political dynamics playing out in the coming months.
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