This week’s Senate trial is unlikely to convict Donald Trump of inciting sedition against the United States. At least 17 Republican senators are needed for conviction, but only five have signaled they’ll go along.

Why won’t Republican senators convict him? After all, it’s an open and shut case. As summarized in the brief submitted by House impeachment managers, Trump spent months before the election telling his followers that the only way he could lose was through “a dangerous, wide-ranging conspiracy against them that threatened America itself.”

Immediately after the election, he lied that he had won by a “landslide,” and later urged his followers to stop the counting of electoral ballots by making plans to “fight like hell” and “fight to the death” against this “act of war” perpetrated by “Radical Left Democrats” and the “weak and ineffective RINO section of the Republican Party.”

If this isn’t an impeachable offense, it’s hard to imagine what is. But Republican senators won’t convict him because they’re answerable to Republican voters, and Republican voters continue to believe Trump’s big lie.

A shocking three out of four Republican voters don’t think Joe Biden won legitimately. About 45 percent even support the storming of the Capitol.

The crux of the problem is Americans now occupy two separate worlds – a fact-based pro-democracy world and a Trump-based authoritarian one.

Trump spent the last four years seducing voters into his world, turning the GOP from a political party into a grotesque projection of his pathological narcissism.

Regardless of whether he is convicted, America must now deal with the monstrous predicament he left behind: One of the nation’s two major political parties has abandoned reality and democracy.

What to do? Four things.

First, prevent Trump from running for president in 2024. The mere possibility energizes his followers.

An impeachment conviction is not the only way to prevent him. Under Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution, anyone who has taken an oath to protect the Constitution is barred from holding public office if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States. As constitutional expert and former Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman has noted, a majority vote that Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States is sufficient to trigger this clause.  

Second, give Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.

White working-class voters without college degrees who now comprise a large portion of it need good jobs and better futures. Many are understandably angry after being left behind in vast enclaves of unemployment and despair. They should not have to depend on Trump’s fact-free fanaticism in order to feel visible and respected.

A jobs program on the scale necessary to bring many of them around will be expensive but worth the cost, especially when democracy hangs in the balance.

Big business, which used to have a home in the GOP, will need a third party. Democrats should not try to court them; the Democratic Party should aim to represent the interests of the bottom 90 percent.  

Third, disempower the giant media empires that amplified Trump’s lies for four years – Facebook, Twitter, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators. The goal is not to “cancel” the political right but to refocus public deliberation on facts, truth, and logic. Democracy cannot thrive where big lies are systematically and repeatedly exploited for commercial gain.

The solution is antitrust enforcement and stricter regulation of social media, accompanied by countervailing financial pressure. Consumers should boycott products advertised on these lie factories and advertisers should shun them. Large tech platforms should lose legal immunity for violence-inciting content. Broadcasters such as Fox News and Newsmax should be liable for knowingly spreading lies (they are now being sued by producers of voting machinery and software which they accused of having been rigged for Biden).  

Fourth, safeguard the democratic form of government. This requires barring corporations and the very wealthy from buying off politicians, ending so-called “dark money” political groups that don’t disclose their donors, defending the right to vote, and ensuring more citizens are heard, not fewer.

Let’s be clear about the real challenge ahead. The major goal is not to convict Trump of inciting insurrection. It is to move a vast swath of America back into a fact-based pro-democracy society and away from the Trump-based authoritarian one.

Regardless of whether he is convicted, the end of his presidency has given the nation a reprieve. Unless America uses it to end Trumpism’s hold over tens of millions of Americans, that reprieve may be temporary.

Thankfully, Joe Biden appears to understand this.

Ten Senate Republican have proposed a COVID relief bill of about $600 billion. That’s less than a third of Biden’s plan. They promise “bipartisan support” if he agrees.

Their proposal isn’t a compromise. It would be a total surrender. It trims direct payments and unemployment aid that Americans desperately need. Biden should reject it out of hand.

Republicans say America can’t afford Biden’s plan. “We just passed a program with over $900 billion in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney.

Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Millions of people are hurting.

Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about too much spending. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.

Beyond COVID relief, Biden has other proposals waiting in the wings, such as repairing aging infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one. These would make the economy grow even faster over the long term – further reducing the debt’s share.

There’s no chance that public spending will “crowd out” private investment. If you hadn’t noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world in search of borrowers.  

It’s hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.

If they really don’t want to add to the debt, they have another alternative: A tax on super-wealthy Americans.

The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic, a 40 percent increase. They alone could finance almost all of Biden’s COVID relief package and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. So why not a temporary emergency COVID wealth tax?

Let’s be honest. The real reason Republicans don’t want Biden’s plan is they fear it will work.

This would be the Republican’s worst nightmare: All the anti-government claptrap they’ve been selling since Ronald Reagan will be revealed as nonsense.

Government isn’t the problem and never was. Bad government is the problem, and Americans have just had four years of it. Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans’ utter failures on COVID and jobs.

If Biden gets his plans through, he and the Democrats would reap the political rewards in 2022 and beyond.Democrats might even capture the presidency and Congress for a generation. After FDR rescued America, the Republican Party went dark for two decades.

Trumpian Republicans in Congress have an even more diabolical motive for blocking Biden. They figure if Americans remain in perpetual crises and ever-deepening fear, they’ll lose faith in democracy itself.

This would open the way for another strongman demagogue in 2024 – if not Trump, a Trump-impersonator like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, or Trump Junior.

If Biden is successful, though, Americans’ faith in democracy might begin to rebound – marking the end of the nation’s flirtation with fascism. If he helps build a new economy of green jobs with good wages, even Trump’s angry white working-class base might come around.

Biden doesn’t really need Republicans, anyway. With their razor-thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats can enact Biden’s plans without a single Republican vote.  

My worry is Biden may want so much to demonstrate bipartisanship that his plans get diluted to the point where Republicans get what they want: Failure.

Forget bipartisanship. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans didn’t give a hoot about bipartisanship when they and Trump were in power.

If Republicans try to stonewall Biden’s COVID relief plan, Biden and the Democrats should go it alone through a maneuver called “reconciliation,” allowing a simple majority to pass budget legislation.

If Republicans try to block anything else, Biden and the Democrats should scrap the filibuster – which now requires 60 senators to end debate. The filibuster isn’t in the Constitution. It’s anti-democratic, giving a minority of senators the power to block the majority. It was rarely used for most of the nation’s history.

The filibuster can be ended by a simple majority vote. Democrats now have the power to scrap it. Biden will have to twist the arms of a few recalcitrant Democrats, but that’s what presidential leadership often requires.

The multiple crises engulfing America are huge. The window of opportunity for addressing them is small. If ever there was a time for boldness, it is now.

The Sedition That Nobody’s Talking About

The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – CEOs and their army of lobbyists.

CEOs are being hailed – and hailing themselves – as guardians of democracy. That’s after saying they will no longer donate to the 147 Republican members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors, on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud. 

Give me a break. For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans, and fueling much of the anger and cynicism that opened the door to Trump in the first place.

Their assault hasn’t been as violent as the pro-Trump mob who stormed the Capitol. And it’s entirely legal. But it’s arguably more damaging over the long term.

A study published a few years ago by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, concluded that the preferences of the average American “have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.” Lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

So now, in the wake of Trump’s calamitous exit and Biden’s ascension, we’re to believe CEOs care about democracy?

As Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, put it, “No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition.”

Yet Dimon has been a leader of a more insidious form of sedition. He piloted the corporate lobbying campaign for the Trump tax cut, deploying a vast war chest of corporate donations.

For more than a decade Dimon has driven Wall Street’s charge against stricter bank regulation, opening bipartisan doors in the Capitol with generous gifts from the Street. (Dimon calls himself a Democrat.)

When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump’s Facebook account, he declared: “You just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”

But where was Zuckerberg’s concern for a “functioning democracy” when he amplified Trump’s bigotry and lies for over four years?

After taking down Trump’s Twitter account, Jack Dorsey expressed discomfort about “the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.”

Spare me. Dorsey has fought all attempts to limit Twitter’s power over the “global conversation.” He shuttered Trump only after Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate.

Look, I’m glad CEOs are penalizing the 147 Republican seditionists and that big tech is starting to regulate social media content.

But don’t confuse the avowed concerns of these CEOs about democracy with democracy itself. They aren’t answerable to democracy. At most, they’re answerable to big shareholders and institutional investors who don’t give a fig as long as profits keep rolling in. 

If they were truly committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidates, close their PACs, stop giving to secretive “dark money” groups and discourage donations by their executives.

And they would throw their weight behind the “For the People Act”, the first bills of the new Congress, offering public financing of elections among other reforms.

Don’t hold your breath.

The fourth branch is already amassing a war chest to stop Joe Biden and the Democrats from  raising corporate taxes, increasing the minimum wage, breaking up big tech and strengthening labor unions.

Make no mistake: These CEOs and their corporations don’t actually care about protecting democracy. They care only about protecting their bottom line.

The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – CEOs and their army of lobbyists.

Notwithstanding Biden’s ambitious agenda, dozens of giant corporations have said they will not donate to the 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud, which rules out most Republicans on the Hill.  

After locking down Trump’s account, social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are policing against instigators of violence and hate, which hobbles Republican lawmakers trying to appeal to Trump voters.

As a result of moves like these, CEOs are being hailed – and hailing themselves – as guardians of democracy. The New York Times praises business leaders for seeking “stability and national unity.” Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Airlines, says “our voice is seen as more important than ever.” A recent study by Edelman finds the public now trusts business more than nonprofit organizations, the government or the media.

Give me a break. For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans and fueling much of the anger and cynicism that opened the door to Trump in the first place.

Their assault hasn’t been as dramatic as the Trump thugs who stormed the Capitol, and it’s entirely legal – although more damaging over the long term.

A study published a few years ago by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern’s Benjamin Page, concluded that the preferences of the average American “have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.” Instead, lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

The capture of government by big business over the last several decades has infuriated average Americans whose paychecks have gone nowhere even as the stock market has soared.

The populist movements that fueled both Bernie Sanders and Trump began in the 2008 financial crisis when Wall Street got bailed out and no major bank executive went to jail, although millions of ordinary people lost their jobs, savings and homes.

So now, in wake of Trump’s calamitous exit and Biden’s ascension, we’re to believe CEOs care about democracy?

“No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition,” explained Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and chairman of the Business Roundtable, referring to the disgraced Republicans.

Yet Dimon has been a leader of the more insidious form of sedition. He piloted the corporate lobbying campaign for the Trump tax cut, deploying a vast war chest of corporate donations.

For more than a decade Dimon has driven Wall Street’s charge against stricter bank regulation, opening bipartisan doors in the Capitol with generous gifts from the Street. (Dimon calls himself a Democrat.)

When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump’s Facebook account, he declared “you just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”

Where was Zuckerberg’s concern for a “functioning democracy” when he amplified Trump’s lies for four years?

After taking down Trump’s Twitter account, CEO Jack Dorsey expressed discomfort about “the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.”

Spare me. Dorsey has fought off all attempts to limit Twitter’s power over the “global conversation.” He shuttered Trump only after Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate.

Look, I’m glad CEOs are penalizing the 147 Republican seditionists and that Big Tech is starting to police social media content.

But don’t confuse the avowed concerns of these CEOs about democracy with democracy itself. They aren’t answerable to democracy. At most, they’re accountable to big shareholders and institutional investors who don’t give a fig as long as profits keep rolling in.

If they were committed to democracy, CEOs of big corporations would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidates, close their PACs, stop giving to secretive “dark money” groups, and discourage donations by their executives.

They’d stop placing ads in media that have weaponized disinformation – including Fox News, Infowars, Newsmax and websites affiliated with right-wing pundits. Social media giants would start acting like publishers and take responsibility for what they promulgate.  

If corporate America were serious about democracy it would throw its weight behind the “For the People Act,” the first bills of the new Congress, offering public financing of elections among other reforms.

Don’t hold your breath.

Joe Biden intends to raise corporate taxes, increase the minimum wage, break up Big Tech, and strengthen labor unions.

The fourth branch is already amassing a war chest for the fight.

10 Bold Moves Biden Can Make Without Congress

We did it. We took control of the Senate from Mitch McConnell. Even so, Republicans may still be able to block key parts of Joe Biden’s agenda. But there are plenty of critical policies he can and must enact without them.

Biden’s first task is to undo Trump’s litany of cruel and disastrous executive orders. He has already announced he’ll rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, re-enter the World Health Organization, and repeal Trump’s discriminatory Muslim travel ban. And there are at least 48 other Trump policies that he can reverse on day one.

In addition, here are 10 critical policies Biden can implement without Congress:

FIRST: He can lower drug prices through Section 1498 of the federal code, which gives the government the power to revoke a company’s exclusive right to a drug and license the patent to a generic manufacturer instead. 

SECOND: He can forgive federal student loans – thereby helping to close the racial wealth gap, giving a financial boost to millions, and delivering a major stimulus to the economy. 

THIRD: He can use existing antitrust laws to break up monopolies and prevent mergers -- especially in Big Tech and the largest Wall Street banks.

FOURTH: He can institute pro-worker policies for federal contractors – who are responsible for a fifth of the economy – such as requiring a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave, and refusing to contract with non-union companies.

FIFTH: He can empower the Labor Department to aggressively monitor and penalize companies that engage in wage theft and unpaid overtime, and who misclassify employees as independent contractors – as Uber and Lyft do.

SIXTH: He can make it easier for people to get health care by eliminating Medicaid work requirements, reinstating federal funding to Planned Parenthood, and expanding access to Affordable Care Act plans. Then it’ll be up to us to push him to enact Medicare for All.

SEVENTH: He can ban the sale of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling. He can further tackle the climate crisis by reinstating the 125 environmental regulations rolled back by Trump and directing federal agencies to deny permits for new fossil fuel projects, and halting all fossil fuel lease sales and permits.

EIGHTH: His Securities and Exchange Commission can reinstate its ban on stock buybacks – so that corporations are more likely to use their cash to invest in workers instead of enrich their shareholders. And he can rein in Wall Street by strengthening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other financial regulators, while his Treasury Department can close many tax loopholes.

NINTH: He can address the cruelty of capital punishment by granting clemency to everyone on federal death row, effectively ending the death penalty with the stroke of a pen. He can address other injustices by having the Department of Justice implement mass commutations for low-level drug offenders, strengthening the department’s Civil Rights Division, and reining in rampant police misconduct through consent decrees. And he can undo some of the damage wrought by the racist war on drugs by directing his Attorney General to reclassify marijuana as a non-dangerous drug.

TENTH: He can reverse Trump’s cruel immigration agenda by restoring and expanding DACA and raising the yearly number of refugees who can be admitted. 

Even with control of the Senate, Democrats’ slim majority means that Republicans can still obstruct Biden’s policy agenda at every turn. Biden can and must wield his presidential powers through Executive Orders and regulations. The problems America is facing demand it. 

I keep hearing that Joe Biden will govern from the “center.” He has no choice, they say, because he’ll have razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican party has moved to the right.

Rubbish. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with. Most of today’s GOP live in a parallel universe. There’s no “center” between the reality-based world and theirs.

Last Wednesday, fully 95% of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection, even after his attempted coup threatened their very lives.

The week before, immediately following the raid on the Capitol, more than 100 House Republicans and several Republican senators objected to the certification of Biden electors in two states on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud.

Prior to the raid, several Republican members of Congress repeated those lies on television and Twitter and at “Stop the Steal” events.

Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.

According to various surveys, more than half of Republican voters – almost 40 million people – believe Trump won the 2020 race or aren’t sure who won; 45% support the storming of the Capitol; 57% say he should be the Republican candidate in 2024.

In this hermetically sealed cosmos, most Republicans believe Black Lives Matter protesters are violent, immigrants are dangerous and climate change doesn’t pose a threat. A growing fringe openly talks of redressing grievances through violence, including QAnon conspiracy theorists, of whom two are newly elected to Congress, who think Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking operation.

How can Biden possibly be a “centrist” in this new political world?

There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.

Biden must boldly and unreservedly speak truth, refuse to compromise with violent Trumpism and ceaselessly fight for democracy and inclusion.

Speaking truth means responding to the world as it is and denouncing the poisonous deceptions engulfing the right. It means repudiating false equivalences and “both sidesism” that gives equal weight to trumpery and truth. It means protecting and advancing science, standing on the side of logic, calling out deceit and impugning baseless conspiracy theories and those who abet them.

Refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism means renouncing the lawlessness of Trump and his enablers and punishing all who looted the public trust. It means convicting Trump of impeachable offenses and ensuring he can never again hold public office – not as a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda but as a central means of reestablishing civility, which must be a cornerstone of that agenda.

Strengthening democracy means getting big money out of politics, strengthening voting rights and fighting voter suppression in all its forms.

It means boldly advancing the needs of average people over the plutocrats and oligarchs, of the white working class as well as Black and Latino people. It means embracing the ongoing struggle for racial justice and the struggle of blue-collar workers whose fortunes have been declining for decades.

The moment calls for public investment on a scale far greater than necessary for Covid relief or “stimulus” – large enough to begin the restructuring of the economy. America needs to create a vast number of new jobs leading to higher wages, reversing racial exclusion as well as the downward trajectory of Americans whose anger and resentment Trump cynically exploited.

This would include universal early childhood education, universal access to the internet, world-class schools and public universities accessible to all. Converting to solar and wind energy and making America’s entire stock of housing and commercial buildings carbon neutral. Investing in basic research – the gateway to the technologies of the future as well as national security – along with public health and universal healthcare.

It is not a question of affordability. Such an agenda won’t burden future generations. It will reduce the burden on future generations.

It is a question of political will. It requires a recognition that there is no longer a “center” but a future based either on lies, violence and authoritarianism or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility and radical inclusion. And it requires a passionate, uncompromising commitment to the latter.

Call me old-fashioned, but when the president of the United States encourages armed insurgents to breach the Capitol and threaten the physical safety of Congress, in order to remain in power, I call it an attempted coup.

Last week’ rampage left five dead, including a Capitol Hill police officer who was injured when he tangled with the pro-Trump mob. We’re fortunate the carnage wasn’t greater.

That the attempted coup failed shouldn’t blind us to its significance or the stain it has left on America. Nor to the importance of holding those responsible fully accountable.

Trump’s culpability is beyond dispute. “There’s no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame,” said Rep. Elizabeth Cheney, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House.

He should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office – immediately.  

To let the clock run out on his presidency and allow Trump to seek the presidency again would signal that attempted coups are part of the American system. If Senate Republicans can install a new Supreme Court justice in eight days, Trump can be removed from office within ten.

He should then be arrested and tried for inciting violence and sedition (along with Trump Jr. and Rudy “trial-by-combat” Giuliani).

Those who attacked the Capitol should also be prosecuted. They have no First Amendment right to try to overthrow the U.S. government.

Trump’s accomplices on Capitol Hill, most notably Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, should be forced to resign. Knowing Trump’s allegations of voting fraud were false, Cruz and Hawley nonetheless led an attempt to exclude Biden electors, even after the storming of the Capitol.

The United States Constitution says that “no Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress” who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the Constitution, “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.“

Both Cruz and Hawley are eyeing runs for the presidency in 2024. They should be barred from running.

Other abettors are now trying to distance themselves, but their conversions come too late.

Senator Lindsey Graham now says Trump must “understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution,” and criticizes the White House for making “accusations that cannot be proven.”

Graham had been one of Trump’s key attack dogs, even bullying state election officials to change voting tallies. If Graham is not forced to resign, he should at least be censured and stripped of his ranking membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Michael Pence finally broke with Trump, but only after remaining mute as Trump lied and bullied his way through the last eight weeks, thereby signaling agreement with his preposterous claims.

McConnell should also resign or be censured and stripped of committee assignments. Pence should be barred from any future public office.

Some administration officials have already resigned in response to the attempted coup. Transportation secretary Elaine Chao said it was “entirely avoidable,” and education secretary Betsy DeVos told Trump there was “no mistake the impact your rhetoric had.” Other Trumpers are reportedly jumping ship, too.

Yet before Wednesday most of them defended Trump’s antics, lavished him with praise, and willingly did his dirty work. Their complicity should forever haunt their reputations and consciences.

Other accessories are Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai,CEO of Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company.

For four years, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have functioned as Trump’s megaphones, amplifying his every lie and rant. When pressured to remove Trump’s fabrications about the election, they labeled them “disputed.”  

Twitter has now permanently suspended Trump, preventing him from sending messages to his more than 88 million followers “due to the risk of further incitement for violence.” Facebook has banned him indefinitely. YouTube should be next.

But why did it take an attempted coup for them to act?

Many business leaders who are now denouncing the violence enthusiastically bankrolled Trump’s re-election campaign, knowing full well who he was and what he was capable of doing. And they’ve had no qualms about advertising on his largest megaphones, including Fox News. All are complicit because they knew Trump would stop at nothing.

Fox News’s mendacious hosts and producers have no excuse. After repeatedly telling Trump supporters the election was stolen, they’re now saying the attempted coup was “understandable” because Trump supporters believed the election was stolen. Morally, if not legally, they share responsibility for this travesty.

All are all part of the ecosystem that led to Trump’s sedition. That ecosystem is still in place.

Those who say we should “look forward” to a new administration and forget or dismiss what occurred last week are delusional. Unless all who participated in or abetted the attempted overthrow of the United States government are held accountable, it will happen again. Next time it may succeed.

Defeating McConnell: The Real Stakes of the Georgia Runoffs

The upcoming runoff elections in Georgia are about more than replacing two corrupt Republican senators with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. They are about flipping the Senate.

They are referenda on the disastrous tenure of Mitch McConnell and the damage the Republican Party has inflicted on America.

I don’t want to mince words. Mitch McConnell is the most duplicitous, morally bankrupt politician in America. (Well, maybe Trump beats him, but not for long.) He has wielded the GOP to inflict massive damage on our democracy.

In 2016, 293 days before the presidential election, he stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to even give President Obama’s pick a hearing, claiming it was too close to the election to fill the seat. 

But when Ruth Bader Ginsburg tragically passed away in September, 2020, he engineered the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, just 8 days before the 2020 presidential election and after 60 million Americans had already cast their ballots.

That’s not all. After blocking many of Obama’s nominees to the lower federal courts, he rammed through nearly 230 of Trump’s judicial picks, reshaping the federal courts for decades to come.

In 2017, McConnell rushed through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big corporations and the super-rich. Despite his lofty promises, that tax cut increased the government debt by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, and failed to raise wages. Nothing trickled down.

Meanwhile, McConnell has blocked nearly 400 House bills addressing major issues like a minimum wage increase, voting rights, and gun reform.

After the pandemic hit, McConnell refused to extend extra unemployment benefits beyond the end of July while insisting on giving corporations immunity from Covid lawsuits if their workers got sick. And he refused financial aid to cash-strapped state and local governments facing massive budget shortfalls — dismissing it as a “blue state bailout.”

Senate Majority Leader, McConnell also helped subvert our democracy by refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden’s win for more than a month.

Mitch McConnell cares about only one thing: Power. He has single-handedly turned the Senate into a failed institution that has abandoned the American people for partisan gain. 

And that’s what the Senate will continue to be — unless Georgia elects Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. If McConnell remains in control of the Senate, it will be impossible to enact the bold changes this nation requires.

Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are terrible politicians, but these historic elections are about more than defeating them. They’re about defeating Mitch McConnell and rebuking everything the GOP stands for. 

On January 5th, Georgians can make it happen.

If America learns nothing else from these dark times, here are 7 lessons it should take away from 2020:

1. Workers keep America going, not billionaires.

American workers have been forced to put their lives on the line to provide essential services even as their employers failed to provide them with adequate protective gear, hazard pay, or notice of when COVID had infected their workplaces. Meanwhile, America’s 651 billionaires – whose net worth has grown by over $1 trillion since the start of the pandemic – retreated to their mansions, yachts and estates.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sheltered in his 165,000-acre West Texas ranch while Amazon’s warehouse workers toiled in close proximity to each other, often without adequate masks, gloves, or sanitizers. The company offered but then soon scrapped a $2 an hour hazard pay increase for warehouse workers, even as Bezos’ wealth jumped by a staggering $70 billion since March, putting his estimated net worth at roughly $186 billion as the year came to an end.

2. Systemic racism is literally killing Black and Latino Americans.

Black and Latino Americans account for almost 40 percent of coronavirus deaths so far, despite comprising less than a quarter of the population. As they’ve borne the brunt of this pandemic, they’ve been forced to fight for their humanity in another regard — taking to the streets across the country to protest decades of unjust police killings of their community members, only to be met with more police violence.

Among Native American communities, the coronavirus figures are even more horrifying. The Navajo Nation has had a higher per-capita infection rate than any state but can’t adequately care for the sick, thanks to years of federal underfunding and neglect of its healthcare system.

Decades of segregated housing, pollution, lack of access to medical care, and poverty have left communities of color vulnerable to the worst of this virus, and the worst of America.

3. If we can afford to bail out corporations and Wall Street, we sure as hell can afford to help people.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to insist we can’t “afford” $2,000 COVID survival checks for Americans. But the latest coronavirus relief legislation doled out over $220 billion to powerful business interests that could instead have been used to help struggling working families.

Another way of looking at it: The total cost of providing those $2,000 checks ($465 billion) is less than half the amount America’s 651 billionaires added to their wealth during the pandemic ($1 trillion).

4. Health care must be made a right in America.

Even before the pandemic, an estimated 28 million Americans lacked health insurance. After it struck, an additional 15 million lost employer-provided coverage because they lost their jobs. Without insurance, a hospital stay to treat COVID-19 cost as much as $73,000. Remember this the next time you hear pundits saying Medicare for All is too radical.

5. Our social safety nets are woefully broken.

No other advanced nation was as unprepared for the pandemic as was the United States. Our unemployment insurance system is over 80 years old, designed for a different America. We’re one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t provide all workers some form of paid sick leave.

Other industrialized nations kept their unemployment rates low by guaranteeing paychecks during the pandemic. But Americans who filed for unemployment benefits often got nothing or received them weeks or months late. Under new legislation they get just $300 a week of extra benefits to tide them over.

6. The Electoral College must be abolished

Biden won 7 million more popular votes than Trump. But Biden’s margin in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin totaled just 45,000. Had Trump won these three states instead, he would have gained 37 more electoral votes, tying Biden in the electoral college. Under the Constitution, this would have pushed the election to the House of Representatives, with each state delegation getting just one vote. Even though Democrats have a majority in the House, more state delegations have Republican majorities. Trump would have been reelected.

The gap between the popular and electoral college vote continues to widen. The Electoral College is an increasingly dangerous anachronism.

7. Government matters.

For decades, conservatives have told us that government is the problem and that we should let the free market run its course. Rubbish. If nothing else, 2020 has shown that the unfettered free market won’t save us. After 40 years of Reaganism, it’s never been clearer: Government is in fact necessary to protect the public.  

It’s tragic that it took a pandemic, near-record unemployment, millions of people taking to the streets, and a near-calamitous election for many to grasp how broken, racist, and backwards our system really is. Biggest lesson of all: It must be fixed.