However depressing Trump’s Charlottesville comments may be, we should not delude ourselves into believing that Trump will be defeated by any matter of principle.

The current situation recalls the uproar over the video with Trump’s lewd comments on women—an uproar that dissipated to nothing.  It remains to be seen how long the new level of outrage will last.  We can’t dismiss Nazism, but we won’t win on outrage either.  We will get nothing but backlash if perceived bread-and-butter issues are left unaddressed.

The main issue has to be the economy–jobs and prosperity–where many myths are still widely-believed.

Too many people believe that giving businesses everything they want is the path to prosperity.  That is historically false and will come back to haunt us:

– The prosperity of this country cannot possibly be based on protected industries making stuff others make cheaper.   Tariffs are no silver bullet to bring back the days of good, union jobs.

– Education and research are primary engines of prosperity.   They are what supports our standard of living and cannot be treated as money stolen from the private sector.

– We are living in a period of extraordinary technology change.   That is altering the nature of work and affects increasingly many people.  It creates twin problems—preparing our population for success and helping people left behind.   Neither will be magically provided by the private sector alone.

Trump’s policies will defeat us as a country and impoverish us as individuals.  One entry got it right in the NY Times’ list of write-in slogans for the Democratic Party:

“Justice, Compassion and Jobs!”

It speaks to the core values and, in the end, it’s the economy, stupid!

(Wynn Schwartz, Boston)