How the Democrats Elected Donald Trump

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 - 1:00pm
Jeff Faux

Today, Democratic Party leaders are blaming everyone from Vladimir Putin to James Comey to the Electoral College for their defeat in November. But they should look in the mirror. After years of neoliberal economic policies that favored Wall Street over their traditional working class base, populist anger finally erupted against them in what had been solid Democratic states.  The result is a rightwing government led by the bizarre Trump threatens the very institutions of democracy. The question now becomes: Can the Democrats – and the country – find a way forward?

Jeff Faux founded the Economic Policy Institute, the premier research center on economic issues effecting working USians.  He has been warning of the political consequences of the growing inequality between labor and capital since the 1980s, and has been a critic of U.S. trade policies beginning with Bill Clinton’s  NAFTA. Faux wrote a major book about this, Global Class War.  His 2012 book The Servant Economy: Where America’s Elite is Sending the Middle Class turns out to have been prophetic.

UPCOMING TOURS

March 3, 2025 to March 7, 2025

We will depart from San Miguel early in the morning to Patzcuaro, where we will spend three days. We will visit the most important buildings and churches in Patzcuaro and also visit a number of nearby indigenous villages:

Upcoming Forums & Films

Monday, January 13, 2025 - 1:30pm
CST
Jeff Faux
Location:
Join in Person at the Hotel Quinta Loreto Community Room

We are a week before the inauguration of an unstable megalomaniac, totally unfit to be president. His loyalists control the Congress and the Supreme Court. And his stated agenda could destroy American constitutional democracy.  Yet his political opposition hasn’t a clue how to respond.

The issue is not whether the Democrats... Read more

Monday, February 3, 2025 - 1:00pm
CST
José Alfredo Gutiérrez Falcón
Location:
Join in person at the Hotel Quinta Loreto Community Room

While much of the world is shifting to the right, Mexico is moving in a progressive direction. In 2018, the electoral victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA party) initiated "The Fourth Transformation" which is working, against entrenched opposition,... Read more