It has been another banner day in Trump meltdown politics — witness his delusional press conference — but I wanted to flag this story from several days ago, because it illustrates an enormous battle that’s shaping up, wherever the various Russia threads lead us: the willingness of Republicans to go after the financial reforms put in place following the 2008 financial crisis. First off, let’s note the dizzying audacity of Republicans putting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in their crosshairs. The fact of the matter is that the CFPB has pissed off powerful interests because it’s effectively doing exactly what it was designed for — protecting consumers from predatory business practices. That an assault on this bureau could even be contemplated, despite the horrific optics, not to mention the actual substance of going after it, speaks to two important points. The first is that Republicans essentially embrace the principle that businesses need to be free to practice unrestrained exploitation of American consumers. The second is that the Democrats have to a large degree failed to advertise the success of a government agency that operates to protect the little guy, or else the Republicans would not be so emboldened to tangle with it.

I’m of the belief that broadcasting both of these facts — the blatant anti-consumer attitude of the CFPB’s critics, and the bureau’s fundamental success — will be crucial to reviving the Democratic Party’s fighting spirit, and illuminating the fundamental indecency of the GOP. This is as black and white an issue as you could hope for in politics; it energizes the base, appeals to moderates, and can peel off moderate Republicans who will only increasingly be looking to possibilities beyond their own party, as Trump melts down and the Republicans attempt to move forward a profoundly anti-worker, pro-corporate agenda. This is a battle well worth fighting. The CFPB’s greatest vulnerability is that it’s not nearly widely enough known to the public; it’s time to make this bureau into a household word, as a symbol of big, progressive government at its best (no wonder conservatives hate it). Attacks on the CFPB should be recognized as the outrage that they are.

The relative vulnerability of the CFPB links up with a larger topic that I’m hoping to explore more in coming months — the strange disappearance of the 2008 financial crisis from recent politics. We saw this in the 2016 presidential campaign, but more damningly for the Democrats, we saw it disappear from the position of prominence it should have retained during President Obama’s second term. Trump’s ability to win as many votes as he did speaks not simply to the rise of white nationalism, but to profound economic anxieties shared by millions, which were obviously exacerbated and energized by the 2008 crisis and ensuing recession, and which Obama and the Democrats failed to acknowledge and address. I understand that it was to Obama’s and Democrats’ general advantage to highlight the economic recovery, but they seem never to draw the full lessons of 2008: that our economy has increasingly become one of exploitation of the many by the powerful few, and that a sustained, pro-citizen pushback is needed if we are to create an economy that benefits the great majority of the country.