Thank you so much for joining us tonight. My name is kate brouns and on behalf of Harvard Bookstore i am so pleased to introduce this event tonight with robert reich, his new book the system who rigged it, how we fix it. Harvard bookstore brings authors and the book to a committee and our new virtual committed during this unprecedented. Our Event Schedule appears on a website where you can sign up for a newsletter and you can browse our bookshelves. This evenings discussions going to conclude with some time for questions. If you have a question for either of our speakers anytime during the talk goes to the ask your question but at the bottom of the screen and well get to as many as time allows. Also at the bottom of the screen during a presentation you will see a button to purchase the night featured book, the system. All sales to the sling support Harvard Bookstores so huge thank you for your support during this difficult time. Your purchases and your financial contributions are also a donate button at the bottom of the screen. Make this Virtual Office responsible and now more than ever they support the future of a landmark independent bookstore. So thank you for tuning in in support of our authors and the staff of booksellers at Harvard Bookstore. We sincerely appreciate the support now and always. Finally, she might have experience in virtual gatherings the last couple of weeks, technical issues can arise, and if they do will do our best to resolve them as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding. So now i am very pleased to introduce our speakers. Renowned economist Robert Reisch is chancellor professor Public PolicyPublic Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at uc berkeley. He served in three National Administration and is written numerous previous titles including the work of nations which has been translated into 22 languages. He he is also the author of the bestseller the common good and saving capitalism, among others. He is a cofounder of inequality media Whose Mission parallels his own mission come to inform and engage the public about new balance of power. Hes cochlear of the awardwinning film in inequaliy for all and the Netflix Original saving capitalism. He is doing to conversation tonight by acclaimed political philosopher at our own harvard university, michael sandel. With the author of International Bestseller what money cant buy, and justice, what is the right thing to do. They will be discussing roberts new book the system, how the status quo came to be an average citizens cant enact change. Its a muchneeded Political Economic analysis. Senator Elizabeth Warren writes quote robert reich is one of her country most insightful commentators from politics and economics. Both the diagnosis and called her arms, the system shows our economy and our democracy are raked to work for the wealthy and wellconnected. Change is possible if we willing to fight for it. We are so happy to have the two of them here tonight. So without further ado, robert and michael, the digital podium is yours. Thank you, kate. What a pleasure it is to be with you to discuss your book, the e system who rigged it, how we fix it. Actually i think a manifesto for a new progressive politics, and so im eager to discuss it with you and to see what our audience and our participants have to say. Everybody knows bob, that you are one of the leading progressive voices and thinkers on the american scene today, and this book, its an example really of fresh thinking for progressive politics. So thanks so much for joining us and for writing the book. Michael, let me thank you for joining us as well, and Harvard Bookstore for putting this on. This is a virtual book tour in the way, and there are virtues in virtual book tours, and after having done a lot of book tours and my life i am thankful for virtual book tour present a real book tour. The downside is i dont get to see in person. Michael, you are a a dear fried and i wish to reestablish in person, someday post coronavirus, hope we have a chance to sit down and have a coffee somewhere. Great. Lets begin with what really is as i take it the central theme of the book, which is that american Politics Today is not about democrats versus republicans or left versus right. Its about democracy versus oligarchy. Tell us what you mean by that, bob, and what oligarchy means in the context of american Politics Today. I dont have to tell you, michael, but oligarchy is a good old ancient greek term meaning in a kind of shorthand version society in which most of the wealth and power are held by a few rather than majority. The ancient greeks talked about and an oligarchy as being a limited number of families that really presided over in terms of wealth and power the rest of society. Russia today is commonly referred to as oligarchy and the russian oligarchs are very prominent in russia. We dont usually use the term for the United States but i think its becoming more and more appropriate. When i say the Major Division in America Today is between democracy and oligarchy, instead of traditional left versus right, i simply mean that the way in which we used to talk about our political divisions, either more government if you on the left, or Less Government if youre on the right and again im giving you the Cartoon Version of that, we were all involved many of us were involved in those discussions but they become less and less relevant over the past 40 years as well and power have moved to the topic top. We still engage in those leftright discussions and we still pretend or maybe were selfdeluded i think in more cases than not, to think that those are the most important discussions we could be having. But they are not. I think the most important discussion we could be having is the choice we have made not explicitly but implicitly in favor of moving towards an oligarchy and away from our democracy. Now, as we made that choice, as we made that movement away from democracy and toward oligarchy, you say there were three developments here one had to do with the shift from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism and the conception of the role of the corporation. The other was the second was the decline of labor unions. The third is the deregulation of finance and the growth of finance and its centrality in the economy. Tell us, we could spend the entire evening going through the diagnosis but i want to save us time also to get to some of the solutions you propose. I wonder if you could focus on the third, the deregulation of finance and extension of the place of finance in the economy. Can you tell us how this happened and how it contributed to oligarchy rather than democracy . Yes. All three of those changes happened over the last 40 years and they in a way propelled each other and reinforce each other. Finance, the deregulation of finance, happened mostly starting in the 1970s, and remember the legacy that we had inherited from the 1930s was a Financial System that was pretty boring. It worked pretty well but it did not attract a lot of talent for a lot of energy or really much attention. And largely because the regulations were so well developed, because we learned so much on the great crash of 1929 and the excesses of finance in the 1920s and before. Those set of regulations starting with the securities and exchange act of 1933 and the subsequent act of 1934, and on, and all of the regulations that went with those major pieces of legislation, by the 1970s were beginning to wear thin. Because, and for reasons that ii go through in the book, various people involved in finance, in wall street begin to see opportunities for exploitation. Opportunities to act on the fringes of the law. That is, arguably still legally in ways that could make them a great deal of money, and then they can also bribe the politician. I use the term bribe advisedly because ive been in washington for many years in and out of washington, and its a much more subtle system and outright bribery but lets use the term bribery just as a kind of a way of understanding because it is basically giving money to politicians and their campaigns for the sake of getting something in return. Some of that bribery went to loosening the laws come loosening the regulations so that by the 1980s it became possible for financial corporate raiders, if thats what you want to call them, people who saw opportunities involved in taking over companies are threatening to take over companies, that they felt were not well managed a weather was too much fat or where employees didnt need to be hired. You could do the same work by outsourcing outsourcing abroad bring in Automated Equipment or whatever have you, which gets to know the piece of the puzzle. Finance continued to be deregulated. It has its own internal almost self propelling mechanism. Once you begin to deregulate it, more and more opportune for money, then more, was attracted wall street and more talent attracted wall street found more and more ways of exploiting the system and using bribes to deregulate. So by the time we got to the late 1990s, early 21st century, the system was ripe for an explosion and, of course, thats what we had in 2008. Now i want to get to the part of your book that is concerned with who rigged it. One of the striking themes of the book is that it is not only republicans oligarchs, republican politicians who rigged the system, you argue that probusiness or wall street friendly democrats as well as republicans participated in rigging the system. Much of the deregulation, getting rid of the glasssteagall law, for example, happened during a democratic administration. In that case, the bill Clinton Administration. We will get to the bailout during the obama years and a moment, but can you describe how it is you have watched as democratic administrations, not only republican ones, have been participants in the deregulation of finance and the rigging of the system as you described it. I dont want to engage in a false equivalence between republicans and democrats because when it comes to rigging, republicans were much more, more experience in rigging the system for the benefit of the big corporations and the wealthy. The democrats certainly as i sit in the been guilty as well. There are wall street democrats, there are corporate democrats, they exert great influence in Democratic Party. I build the book around a gentleman named jamie dimon who is the ceo of j. P. Morgan chase, the largest bank in the United States. A man with the norms influence in politics as those in finance, who was very often interviewed on positions, on television because of his acumen but also because he has positioned himself as a democrat, somebody who straddles both parties but really is, he says in his heart, a democrat and a democrat who cares about widening inequality and so forth but jamie dimon is very much an exemplar of what has happened to the Democratic Party. That is, these wall street democrats and corporate democrats with the best of intentions, and it dont mean to suggest that these are bad people, one reason i entitled the book the system is so we dont fall into the trap of thinking that all we have to do is get rid of the bad people and the villains, and dividend will be fine. Jamie dimon and others have contributed to the rigging and then made it, and ive seen it, very close, they have corrupted the Democratic Party just as the Republican Party has been corrupted. Finally, michael, you alluded to my years in the Clinton Administration. I am very proud to have been part of the bill Clinton Administration. Im very proud of what we accomplished, but what i saw firsthand was this tidal wave of money and its corrosive effects on the not only the Clinton Administration and the Republican Party and democrats in congress, but our entire democracy. It was before Citizens United against the federal election commission, that Terrible Supreme Court case, way before Citizens United already money, big money was engulfing our democracy and making it very difficult to enact or promulgate policies that were for the benefit of everyone. Now lets move on to the 2008 financial crisis in the bailout which begin under the Bush Administration continued and was administered under the Obama Administration. To what extent do you think that the Obama Administration handling of the bailout contributed to the rigging of the system . Even as some would argue, paved the way to donald trump. Is that going too far or do you think theres something in that . I think there is something in that. In the book i do trace the developments of that kind of vicious rightwing populism, that angry populism the steps that were taken including, including the Obama Administration, and that bailout was viewed by americans, and i think quite fairly, as a huge kayden to wall street that it perpetrated for years i kind of gambling casino that made the entire economy very fragile. And when that fragility made itself evident in 2008 and cause the entire economy to collapse, a lot of people felt that bailing out wall street, although they understood, they might understood rationally why it was necessary, they felt it was unfair, and homeowners who also supposed to be bailed out under the tarp mechanism, what a wonderful acronym, tarp. Tarp is something you cant see behind. That was acronym for that program. Homeowners did not get bailed out. The big Financial Institutions did. Very few if any top executives were indicted or in any way held accountable for what happened. Jamie dimon, for example, was right there at the helm of that big, big j. P. Morgan bank, bailed out. And then subsequently was in the forefront of the business communities efforts to actually minimize the amount of regulation that would be put in place to make sure that that 2008 explosion did not happen again. A lot of people were angry, and the Tea Party Movement on the right and the brief occupy movement on the left both came out about experience, that since that the game was rigged in favor of the rich and the powerful. And then some ways, michael, i think that Bernie Sanders and donald trump are both lineal descendents of the Tea Party Movement on the right and the occupy movement on the left. One just quick note, and that is, in 2015 i was doing some very preliminary research for this book, and i was undertaking focus groups in the midwest, in michigan, wisconsin, a lot of the rust belt areas and also down in North Carolina and missouri. I kept on asking people, well, there are no primary candidates in the democratic and republican primaries. Who are you most interested in . Who would you support for president . I kept on hearing from people in these rust belt states and also in some southern and western states come i kept hearing the same thing. People said we are very interested in two gentleman. One is Bernie Sanders and the other is donald trump. Michael, when they heard people repeatedly using these two men as the kind of, as who, for people who they were most interested in voting for, should they get the election, should they get the primary nod in both parties, i knew something had changed in america, that there was a degree of willingness to do something quite radical. As people why donald trump and Bernie Sanders . Face it, both of them were outsiders and he will shake things up. They will on rig the american political system that is now rigged against them. As you point out in your interviews, people that not only think that they it had failed craven that the system was unfair, they felt anger and resentment at the absolute. People analyzing the 2016 election have attributed much of Donald Trumps victory to racism. And i think that simplifies far too much. Yes, there was obviously an element of racism but you ask yourself why was the racism . Weve had racism in american politics since it for the founding of the republic. Racism and xenophobia and misogyny all played a very large part in the 2016 election i think because people were ready to be used to use their angry, to have their anchor channel by a demagogue called donald trump toward scapegoats that event scapegoats before in american history. It was the anger, the sense of frustration that was the really Compelling Force in 2016. Heres a political question which arose in 2016 but is very much in the moment now. Given the anger and frustration on the right and on the left, at the system being rigged, at wages been stagnant, a sense of cultural exclusion, a sense of powerlessness, why do you think that unless they are turning populist, as donald trump from the right, was able to capture that anger and resentment more effectively than Bernie Sanders was able to do on the left . Its a good question. I asked myself over and over. I think the answer isnt that the democratic establishment had already invested far more in Hillary Clinton and republican establishment had invested in anybody other than donald trump. It was not a dominant republican candidate in 2016 supported by the party and the party regular regulars. There was jeb bush at the beginning. Thats right but he stated very, very quickly. That was 2016, bob. What about now . Here is a a blunt way of puttig the question. I think your diagnosis is very powerful and compelling. Why then in 2020, this time, did bernie leaves . I think bernie lost not because progressives were not dominant in the party. In fact, i think the aggressors will more dominant in the Democratic Party today than ever before in my lifetime, but because there were two very effective aggressive candidates. It wasnt just Bernie Sanders. It was also Elizabeth Warren. And if you look at what happened really beginning in october of last year, and then right through the primaries, which is a is that bernie and elizabeth, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, kept on splitting the progressive voter together they had more votes anybody else. In fact, even up to super tuesday they both had more votes than anybody else but those votes were split. Jill biden managed to move right through the center. Joe biden. The old center, and i think the establishment was quite relieved. One of the reasons that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both ultimately lost is not just that they split the vote, but also that the democratic establishment got extremely nervous Elizabeth Warren first, when she was number one. There was a brief interval where she was leader. She was promoting a wealth tax. It scared the bejesus out of the democratic establishment, the corporate and wall street democrats. And then Bernie Sanders moved into the leadership and, of course, hes scared them and had been scaring them since 20152016. So joe biden was the natural sort of safe harbor for them. As i said, by that time the progressives had split the vote between bernie and elizabeth. So there was an electoral explanation that there are simply two progressive candidates dividing the vote and the Democratic Party. Id like to ask you a broader question about the staying power of oligarchy rather than democracy. It has been as you point out in the book are really, it is developed over a period of the last four decades. And while it is true that the power of the money in politics is enormous, just as you say and as you document in the book, its also true that when it comes to voting on election day, the majority still gets its way. In the majority of voters are not in the top 1 for the top 10 . The majority of voters are not beneficiaries of the trump tax cuts or the deregulation that you described, that tax cuts, the deregulation. So my question, broader than electoral politics is this. Why over the period of the last three to four decades, if people are increasingly aware that the system is rigged against them, the majority of people, and they resent it and they are aware of stagnant wages while those at the top have gained enormous rewards, why does the system have such staying power . What is it about the beliefs or the ideologies or the public philosophy that accompanies the rising inequality of recent decades that gives it a kind of plausibility or staying power . Isnt there some ideal, however misdirected, embedded in the system that enables, that makes people willing to accept inequalities that dont work to their advantage . First of all, michael, i want to question your premise a little bit. Because i think the populist revolution started already and donald trump was elected president. The republican establishment is not im pleased with what he did. He has rewarded them with tax breaks and regulatory rollbacks. But when he was elected a lot of the republican establishment was very nervous and he still noticed in terms of some of his policies. Hes crazy. Hes a sociopath in many respects. But really, the underlying question you ask, i i try to ds in the book. I think the oligarchy has used some very powerful means of preserving its power. Notwithstanding all of the frustration and i was ten all of the distrust that is increased over the last 40 years. One method is to keep everybody angry at each other. That is, the divisiveness between left and right, old left an old rights come democrats, republicans, racial divisiveness, misogyny, xenophobic device of this of this in a sense plays in the hands of the oligarchy because it means that people are so busy being angry at each other they dont look upward and where the wealth and the power of the political influence action allies. So its, the culture war is distracting people from economic wealth . Its not just the culture wars. Thats part of it but it is also racism and misogyny and xenophobia and Everything Else. Its not just culture. Its a kind of combination of culture wars and kind of a vicious divisiveness that obviously donald trump has contributed to. But ive seen spurred ever since really Newt Gingrich in 1995 used it as a political ploy. But then theres also a second factor that the oligarchy has used and utilized, and thats making the markets into a kind of religion, a market fundamentalism. Its like the divine right of kings in the 17th century. They used to cloak power behind a kind of set of mythologies about really what should be and the kind of moral rectitude and righteousness of the market. Now, obviously the market is a human creation and obviously the rules of the market depend upon who is in government and to their listening to. Because the market hasdecreed it were poor people deserve where they are because the market has decreed that they shall be poor. Yes, the meritocracy, the mythology of this meritocracy. If you accept that proposition that the market is the end all and be all, if the market is just desserts and youve written extensively about this eloquently, it amounts to where you are in the market and if the market is fundamentally fair , then its a kind of tautology but the reality is that the market is a creation, very much and we have seen this again and again and ive seen it and my in and out of government. Directly, the market is a creation ofpower. It is a function of who has the power to create the rules of the market. Autocracy in the market itself, do you think most people or the average american voter, a wealthy person thinks asthey do in some countries they must be a crook or they must have deserved it. Given the choice. I think most people would say they deserve it. They must have done something right and in fact when Elizabeth Warren talk about, produced her tax proposal, some of the most vociferous criticisms were that the wealth tax was somehow demonizing billionaires were very wealthy people and after all, so this argument went they got to where they are because they deserved it. Because they made a lot of money and they created new industries or new ideas or jeff basis for example, he created amazon. Couldnt he be entitled to have 110 billion fortune . Its that kind of attitude that is still very much in the United States. Its been in america since the beginning. It really is tested in times like the first gilded age and now this second gilded age we are in because the degree of wealth, the degree of power is so much larger than it has ever been in most peoples memories. But would you say to build a new progressive politics, its necessary to take on and to subject to political debate this deeply ingrained idea that market rewards respond to peoples merits . I think it is but its a tricky and difficult thing to do and ive been involved in enough Political Campaigns including very briefly one in which i ran to know that , in massachusetts. Ive got it on my Bumper Sticker. You may be the only onewho has your Bumper Sticker left, i took mine off. Its very difficult to actually get across in the heat of the campaign, in the excitement of the campaign a complicated paragraph. Youre lucky if you can get a few sentences or maybe even a phrase. But youre right in the sense that this mythology, this market fundamentalism does have to be taken onsomehow. And the trick i think for democrats and the future is going to be how to take it on and alsonot vilify people who are wealthy just because they are wealthy but actually talk about the system as a system that needs to be fundamentally reformed. I know there are people whowould like to ask questions and i want to turn to questions in a moment but before we do , one question connecting, what weve just beendiscussing to the current Political Campaign in november elections and the way , the argument democrats should make running against donald trump. Heres one scenario that many people and Many Democrats would say id like to hear whether you would agree or disagree. Its very hard to change peoples minds on fundamental questions in the case of a sprawling Residential Campaign so even those democrats who believe in the progressive diagnosis and prescriptions of your book, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warrens primarycampaigns , should set those questions aside. The strongest Democratic Campaign against donald trump is to focus on his character. To focus on restoring decency to American Public life and to focus onrestoring norms , rule of law, civility , Mutual Respect and to leave all of these important but controversial questions about power and wealth, structural inequalities for later. Because we have to be beating donald trump, whatwould you say to that argument . I would say theres a lot to that argument with one big caveat and that caveat is we are in the middle aseverybody knows of the worst Health Crisis since the 1918 pandemic. In more than 100 years and where in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s. And on top of Everything Else obviously we havearguably the worst president and administration maybe ever. So there are many ways in which you could mount an attack. I do think its important though to attract progressives and young people into this campaign and to have them vote. Theyre not going to be attracted and theyre not going to vote simply on a platform of decency or back to the way it used to be or kind of lets reestablish the old norms. The young people who voted for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and were excited by a vision of the future really need more than that to get to the voting booths so there is the quandary, how do you do that and not scare off a lot of other voters . Maybe the way you do that and i want to go back to the 2000 campaign for a moment because there was one week in the 2000 campaign when al gore actually went off script and began talking about the campaign that he really wanted to run was between average working people and the privileged and powerful. He said for one solid week, my campaign is about getting power back to ordinary working people away from those who are privileged in this country and then that one week is pulls sword. He did better in that one week then he did any time in the 2000 election. I dont have firsthand knowledge of why he stopped that one week but my second hand knowledge and i heard it from several sources is that the democratic establishment were just overwhelmed with anger and suspicion and it was like when obama went to wall street and callthem fatcats. They still have not got over that. So i think that joe biden, he may be incapable constitutionally of doing this but i think if joe biden simply talked about the power and wealth and privilege in this country and why it is so important to get wealth and power away from a terribly small collectionof people, hes not going to use the word oligarchy but i think that would be really very important. Lets go to some of the questions that people have been sending in. Given the corruption and conservatism in both parties, this is a question from michael, and the defeat of the fdr like sanders, is meaningful reform possible short of a massive populist revolt and how likely is a french revolution style backlash . I dont recommend first of all i certainly dont recommend a french revolution or even a french revolution backlash. You and i both know and any historian knows how dangerous it is. Once people really no longer leave, or believe that the mechanisms in place to solve differences will actually do it or that the game really is so profoundly rigged that its hopeless, that reform cannot work. Once a significant number of americans reach that point and we are in trouble. As a society there is no common good. There is just brute force against brute force. I worry about that quite frankly. I think that i recognized in some of the young people i teach a kind of creeping cynicism and nihilism that i last saw in this country in the late 1960s. Which ultimately did not really and terribly well. Another question is rather more focused but its in interesting question. If we had a system of public bench like north dakota andthe Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve acting more like a public bank , would that help with income inequality . What is the role and perhaps you could take up the broader question. What is the role of the Federal Reserve in the incoming, income inequality youvewritten about and for that fact the oligarchy tendencies with politics . Fascinating question. The Federal Reserve placed different roles at different points in time and i do invite the questioner or anybody to go back in time to Mariner Eccles who was the first chairman of the Federal Reserve and really was therefore years. In fact the Federal Reserve building in washington is named after him. He was a true progressive. He thought of the Federal Reserve as the peoples bank. And he thought that the fed would be the vehicle for Massive Public works, for doing all sorts of things that ultimately the new deal did do but without the feds support. But then you had paul volker who basically set out to break the back of inflation and ultimately the worst recession, a sudden vshaped recession weve had in this country and basically threw jimmy carter out of office and some people still venerate the late paul volcker but he was a very different character rum Mariner Eccles so the thing has potential for being a peoples bank but it hasnt so far. And the current fed in bailing out big corporations, that is buying up the bonds that they created, the debts that they created because for years they have been buying back their shares of stock and going deep into debt to do that. The current fed is really tempting fate in terms of moral hazard. A lot of countrys are going to do exactly what the big banks have done and they assume that theyre going to be bailed out and when this is all over they will probably go deep and deeper into debt. Basically my back their shares of stock stock and it seems to have worked. Another question brings up the question of shared buybacks. Takes these simple issues as paul, shared buybacks area even if the political will to scale them back could be found, how could that be carried out across transnational corporations, global offices who sharetrade on various exchanges . Its a great question and there is a thing called the securities and Exchange Commission still in the United States and it still does Police Companies that sell their shares of stock over the american stock exchanges. The new york stock exchangesand amex and so on. If you want to trade shares in the unitedstates on any of those exchanges youve got to obey the law. The sec could go back to what the law was before Ronald Reagans sec changed in 1983 and that was no buybacks. They were not permitted before 1983. John chad, chairman of the securities and Exchange Commission under reagan was the one who said and he convinced his fellow commissioners buybacks should be acceptable but for all, a lot of reasons we dont have time to go into i think that they are stockmanipulation. Show so should we bend . Absolutely. Heres another question. This one from erin. Many politicians seem to use populism as a pejorative. For example as people discussed the populist backlash that led to trump and support for sanders. But isnt populism about the desires and needs of the people . Isnt populism a strongform of democracy . I would say it is and i do think its unfortunate that its gotten such a bad name. If you go back to the 1890s there was an interesting period of time where populism was associated with Williams Jennings bryant who kind of martyred himself on the cross of gold, he ran for president in 1986 and before that ran twice for president but he was a party populist, he was called a party populist and he tarnished the image of populism in the eyes of not just theestablishment but also a lot of people who believed in science because he didnt believe in evolution either. He was the lawyer defending the school that didnt want to teach evolution but you see there was a counterpoint to populism in the late 19th century and that was progressivism and Teddy Roosevelt represented a different tradition which was much more reformist which assumed that the institutions that we had in place were basically okay. But they did need to be reformed and as roosevelt said , the malefactors of big money from the gilded age, they needed to be put in their place. We needed to use antitrust laws and regulations to make sure that big money did not abuse its power. I think thats what progressivism really is still about and maybe thats a betterterm and populism. Ronald says this is a question as a followup to that. You point out in the book and others have observed that in many ways though trump is called a populist and he appealed to many workingclass voters in 2016 and since, his actual policies give the wealthy what they want. The tax cuts and the regulatory rollbacks and so on that you write about. And yet it doesnt seem, i could be wrong but it doesnt seem that these ways of catering to the interests of the wealthy have really destroyed his support among workingclass voters. Why do you supposethat is . For several reasons. One is that his style is still there very much that of an antiestablishment, you know, a populist. He likes to sound tough and he has rallies in which hes politically incorrect and he looks and sounds as if hes calling it like it is but the second point, very important point is it he also has fox news behind him and fox news manages to translate what is good for the oligarchy in terms of tax cuts and regulatory rollbacksin ways that make its viewers , many of them workingclass, the old that they are populist policies that actually work for working people. Without fox news and not sure donald trump would be nearly as successful as he has been. Its that combination and then obviously Mitch Mcconnell and the republican senators but its that combination that has managed to pull the wool over the eyes of many workingclass people and it is very difficult for democrats to simply say over and over again to workingclass americans you know , youre worse off than you were before and the wealthy and big corporations are much betteroff than they were before. And hes done everything he possibly can to widen any quality and basically make your lives more difficult. Its hard to make that argument just by stating it. But it may be that the coronavirus and the economic crisis we are in makes some workingclass people a little bit more open to hearing it. I want to push you a little bit on this bob and i think its important certainly politically. Of course theres fox news and of course theres Mitch Mcconnell but how much of it is pulling the wool over the eyes of workingclass voters and how much is it due to the fact that the Democratic Party has essentially alienated itself in recent decades from a great many workingclass voters so they are not credible. Theyre not a credible alternative for many workingclass voters . You put your finger on something as you know because youve read my book i talk about quite a lot in the book and that is the Democratic Party s didnt just lose the White Working Class over the past 40 years. It lost the workingclass. I think there were two years in the Clinton Administration when billclinton was elected and the democrats had control over both the house and senate. Same thing with the Obama Administration. Obama had control and the democrats had control of both the house and senate. In those two years it was possible for the democrats to really do things that would otherwise be very difficult such as make it easier to form labor unions. Or use antitrust against the increasing consolidation of big corporations or make it more difficult for wall street to do what it was doing but in neither of those periods of time did the Democratic Party do anything of the sort. Why not . I think as we started talking about 40 minutes ago it was because the Democratic Party still is dominated in many important ways by wall street and by big corporations and the abandonment of the workingclass was no accident. It was because of certainly by the 1980s the democrats were drinking at the same funding trough as the republicans and tony clay lowe who is head of the Congressional Campaign committee including the democrats Democratic Party in the 1980s and tony cuelho was vocal about it. He said were going to be in charge of the house forever, weve been in charge, why do we allow the other republicans to get all that money from wall street and big corporations, we should be doing it and that was the beginning of a very diabolical and very sad i think period for the Democratic Party. There is no reason any labor union person or any workingclass person should be voting republican. But you are absolutely right and i write about it, the democrats did not do what they could have done. Whats interesting is that this trend is not unique to american politics and to the Democratic Party. The social democratic parties of europe, the labour party in britain, the spd in germany, socialist party in france, all in recent decades and they have different systems, less egregious systems of Campaign Finance than we do. They had increasingly become a party of university educatedprofessional classes. And this has led this along with the policies that go with that as q the flight of workingclass voters to other parties. To in some cases authoritarian populists parties and politicians. Its a farreaching phenomenon, this shift. The centerleft parties which began life in the 20th century as workingclass parties increasingly are the parties of the professional classes, university educated classes and you saw this also in the boat with those without a College Education voted for brexit, those without voted against, do you think somethingbroader is going on here . I do and i think what were seeing is the disenfranchisement and the disinterment of workingclass people who dont have College Educations. Right across the west, across advanced countries but having said that he Say Something else that works against that. The United States is still an outlier in terms of inequality, stagnant wages, the lack of healthcare and Public Health insurance. The lack of public support for higher education. The lack of even paid sick leave. You go down the list of things that American Workers dont have in contrast to workers in europe were workers in japan or other industrialized countries and you see that even though they are drifting towards the kind of university educated elites , that is those countries and those workingclass parties, those labor parties they still are apprenticed on far different notions about power and the kind of appropriate mess of how that power is used in the United States. Most of them, they the labor unionization is far greater than the unitedstates. Consider in the 1950s 35 percent in the United States of private Sector Workers were unionized. Today 6. 4 percent of privateSector Workers inthe United States are unionized. Are smaller than any other advanced country and i think hardly for that reason we dont have any countervailing power in this country right now. Countervailing the power of big money and big corporations. Are coming up to the end of our talk but i want to ask one last question that has been posted by our viewers. And youve mentioned a couple of times bob how this themes of the book play out during this moment of pandemic. Though i want to give you a chance to that but it may also connect with the question that summer road in. Professor wright, in 2008 useful but my commencement at uc berkeley and you didnt mince words about the challenges our class was facing. What advice would you give graduates of the class of 2020 area. My most important piece of advice is not to despair and not to succumb to cynicism. Because you see, once we do feel that no change is possible, then the other side wins. Then the oligarchy wins everything. And theres no possibility of reform and we might aswell give up our democracy. Dont fall for it. Continue to fight. It is the most important fight of your future. The book is the system. Who read it, how we fixed it. Its should be i think a manifesto for a new progressive politics. In american life. It comes at a crucial moment in an election year. And so for the book and for this conversation, thank you so much. Michael, thank you so much. Quick questions and i look forward to thatcup of coffee in harvard square. Good. Thank you to both of you again tremendously for joining us tonight and thank you to everyone out there in the audience for spending your eveningwith us. Please learn more about this important book and purchase the system at the link below. So on behalf of Harvard Bookstore in cambridge massachusetts, have a good night. Please keep reading and please say well. Here are some of the current bestselling nonfiction books according to the washington post. Topping the list is glennon doyles memoir untamed followed by the splendid and vile, historian eric larsons study of Winston Churchills leadership during the london blitz and after that from candy argues america must choose to be antiracist and work towards building a more Equitable Society and how to be an antiracist. And in between the world and me National Book award winner Tanehisi Coates looks at the state of america. Me and White Supremacy by paul asad who addresses White Supremacy and racial injustice. Most of these authors have appeared on tv and you can watch them online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at some books being published this week. Even though its releases being challenged former National Security advisor in the Trump Administration john boltons new book the room where ithappened is a jewel to be widely available on tuesday. In five days, Robin Hood Foundation ceo westmore and journalist erica green at the protests against Police Brutality in baltimore in the wake of the death of freddie gray in april 2015 Newt Gingrich argues why donald trump must be real elected. Also being published this week in jesus and john wayne history professor christian that makes explores why evangelicals have championed the president trump. Catherine beltran examines how the kgb help bring Vladimir Putin to power inclusions people and then thank you for voting foraaron geiger smith looks at the ins and outs of voting in america. But for her in an upcoming sunday evenings when a program on cspan. Find in this week wherever books are sold and watch for many authors in the near future on book tv on cspan2. Everyone, my name is Vanessa Mendoza and im an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. And your host for the Young Leaders circle. I think thank all of you for taking the time to attend this event today, both are young members and our general membership. And im so sorry that we cant all be together in person although i very much hope it will be sometime soon but in the meantime its nice to connect this way. And it stated, the Manhattan Institute is putting together a ton of virtual content that they will be going out over the next few months so