Robert Reich: Every Single Republican Must Go

My friends, this may well be the most important election in our lifetimes.  Two years ago, many of us didn’t know how low Trump and his enablers would bring this nation. Now we do. Although we cannot at this point vote Trump out of office, we can repudiate him and all he stands for by voting every Republican out of office.

Trump has made this election into a referendum on him. He is a historic anomaly—a president who lies incessantly; who generates fear and fuels hatefulness; who viciously attacks the free press, political opponents and all who disagree with him; who uses his office for personal gain; and who cozies up to dictators while abandoning America’s historic friends. For the sake of our democracy and our future, we must send a clear signal that we find Trumpism repugnant.

While Trump and his Republican enablers manufacture false threats to America—caravans, Mexicans, Muslims, black athletes who don’t stand for the national anthem, transgender people, “globalists,” George Soros—they dismiss the real threats to America that are growing worse by the day: climate change; widening inequalities of income, wealth and political power; the suppression of votes; foreign intrusions into our elections; and the most expensive and least effective healthcare system in the world. We must get back to work on what is critical to our future.

Every branch of the federal government is now under the control of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party is under the control of Trump. Unless constrained, he and they will be emboldened—to eliminate what’s left of the Affordable Care Act, to cut Medicare and Medicaid, to eviscerate Social Security, to give more tax cuts to the rich and large corporations.

The Republican Party has lost its right to govern. It once stood for a set of ideas that, while not always appropriate to America’s needs, at least gave the party some reason for being—states’ rights, free trade and fiscal prudence. Now it stands for nothing but Trumpism.

It is time to renounce the hatemongering and race-baiting that has engulfed this nation. It is time to affirm that we are a tolerant and courageous people—not the bigots and fearful cowards Trump and the Republicans have made us out to be. It is time to lead the world again, not pretend we can isolate ourselves from it. Our greatness isn’t found in the color of our skin or the uniformity of our ethnicity. It is found in our dedication to democracy, equality of opportunity, tolerance of others and freedom.

Vote Tuesday as if your life and the lives of those you love depend on it. They do.