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Friends,
These are the most stressful and nerve-wracking days I can recall. I vacillate between optimism and fear, hope and dread.
You?
I don’t recall an election in which the two candidates represent such opposite poles of the American character.
Harris is the rule of law; Trump, lawlessness. Harris, inclusion; Trump, exclusion. Harris, decency; Trump, loathsomeness. Harris, the American Dream; Trump, the American nightmare.
Harris wants the best for the country; Trump wants the best only for himself.
I don’t need to go on. You know all this. The question is why doesn’t everyone else? That almost half of America appears willing to vote for Trump is itself shocking.
I write this short missive to you every day (sometimes more than once a day) because I want to fortify you. Not just with facts, analysis, and logic, but also with reminders of our shared morality.
I want to reassure you about the common good.
A large part of that common good consists of our concern for something larger than personal wealth, power, or advantage over others — in other words, the opposite of Trump.
The common good is what we owe one another as members of the same society. These duties create a set of relationships that give us a civilized way of living together.
But the common good has been under assault in two ways.
First, it’s been under assault by people with great wealth who have been using their wealth to corrupt our democracy and spew cynicism about the whole project of self-government.
These people include Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Peter Thiel, and Tim Mellon.
Let me also add two powerful people whose cowardice has been reprehensible: Jeff Bezos, who won’t allow his Washington Post to endorse Kamala Harris because he’s afraid of angering Donald Trump. And Jamie Dimon, chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, who never misses an opportunity to comment on public issues but has gone silent when it comes to the dangers posed by Trump.
Worse yet, hugely wealthy people like them have rigged the American political and economic system to their own benefit. They have siphoned off a significant part of the gains of the economy.
The median wage for the bottom 90 percent of Americans has risen just 15 percent in real terms over the last forty years. Over the same years, the stock market has risen 5000 percent. In the 1960s, CEO pay was 20 times the typical worker’s pay. Today, it’s 320 times.
Second, the common good has been under assault by people who have been exploiting Americans’ fears of others to build their political power. The “others” include immigrants, people of color, gay people, trans people, secularists, even women.
The perpetrators include Donald Trump, JD Vance, and much of the current Republican Party, which has become a cesspool of bigotry and lies.
There’s an important relationship between these two threats to the common good.
A major reason so many Americans are willing to follow Trump and blow up the system is they feel they have nothing to lose.
For years they’ve worked hard and followed the rules but have gotten nowhere. They’ve become frustrated, anxious, and angry. Trump, Vance, and the Republican Party have tapped into these feelings and channeled them into hate of “them” — as if immigrants, people of color, gay and trans people, secularists, and women are responsible for what has happened to white working class men.
Both threats to the common good are inviting brutality. They are undermining decency. They are corroding our shared morality.
In these ways, Trump and his sycophants and funders have elevated the dark side of the American psyche. They have normalized viciousness in America.
Since Trump came on the scene in 2015, hate crimes have soared. America has become even more polarized. Average Americans say and do things to people they disagree with that in a different time would have been unthinkable.
Defeating Trump and Vance tomorrow (or however long it takes for the election to be decided) is only the first step.
The next step is to hold Trump accountable for his criminality.
Third, we must contain the billionaires who are undermining American democracy. We must demand a tax on great wealth, more vigorous antitrust enforcement to break up monopolies, and true campaign finance reform.
Fourth, and hardest of all: We must ensure that Americans who have voted for Trump — whether out of anger, despair, bigotry, or delusion — are brought back into the realm of rationality and included in the nation’s future prosperity.
We must create means to achieve the American Dream that do not require a four-year college degree. We have to get big money out of our politics. Social media must filter out hateful disinformation.
The preamble to the Constitution of the United States opens with the phrase “We the people,” conveying a sense of shared interest and a desire “to promote the general welfare,” as the preamble goes on to say.
Which brings me back to tomorrow’s election.
I know you’re scared and stressed. So am I. Some of you may feel quite alone right now. You are not.
All I can say to reassure you is that time and again, Americans have opted for the common good.
We supported one another during the Great Depression. We were victorious over Hitler’s fascism and Soviet communism. We survived Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunts, Richard Nixon’s crimes, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War, the horrors of 9/11, and George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So far, we have survived Donald Trump’s malignant narcissism.
The common good in America is still alive.
If we are true to our history and ideals, Kamala Harris will win, and we’ll get through the destruction Trump will again try to wreak on our democracy in the wake of his defeat, as we did before. And we will get on with the work of achieving broadly-shared prosperity and strengthening our democracy.
We the people will succeed.
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