Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says people who don’t understand why Donald Trump is dominating the GOP field and why the excitement surrounding Bernie Sanders has not dissipated as he falls further behind Hillary Clinton do not understand the “single biggest force in the 2016 election.”
“I just got off the phone with a former Republican member of Congress who says he ‘can’t believe’ Trump won all of today’s primaries. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘The Republican Party is completely out of control,'” Reich wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday evening. “Earlier today I spoke with a Hillary supporter who asked me to urge Bernie to get out of the race. ‘He can’t win, and the longer he stays in the harder he’s making it for Hillary in the general [election],’ she said. ‘I just don’t get it.'”
As of press time, Sanders won Tuesday’s primary in Rhode Island, while losing Pennsylvania and Delaware.
“Neither of the people I spoke with ‘get’ the biggest single force in the 2016 election: a furious revolt against the political establishment,” Reich continued. “The revolt has taken two very different forms — progressive populism (Bernie’s ‘political revolution’) and authoritarian populism (Donald Trump’s bloviated bigotry). They are the positive and negative sides of the same coin.”
“Both should be wake-up calls for America’s two major political parties and the corporate and financial elites that have sponsored them for decades,” he added. “Unless or until the establishment responds to the growing frustrations of a shrinking and increasingly insecure middle class, the populist revolt — its reformist zeal on one side, and its hatefulness on the other — will only intensify in coming years.”
Reich endorsed Sanders back in February.
