How both parties can end crony capitalism

Republicans in order to secure enactment of the so-called Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016.

This shameful law weakened the Drug Enforcement Administration’s power to stop prescription opioids from being shipped to pharmacies and doctors suspected of taking bribes to distribute them — a major cause of the opioid crisis. Last year, Americans got 236 million opioid prescriptions, the equivalent of one bottle for every adult.

Overwhelming majorities of House and Senate Democrats voted for the bill, as well as Republicans, and President Barack Obama signed it into law.

There you have it, folks. Big money is buying giant tax cuts, allowing Russia to interfere in elections, and killing Americans. And that’s just the tip of the corrupt iceberg that’s sinking our democracy.

Average Americans know exactly what’s going on.

I just returned from several days in Kentucky and Tennessee, two states that voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

Trump voters told me they voted for him because they wanted someone who’d shake up Washington, drain the swamp and get rid of crony capitalism. They saw Hillary Clinton as part of the problem.

These people aren’t white nationalists. They’re decent folks who just want a government that’s not of, by and for the moneyed interests.

Many are now suffering buyer’s remorse. They recognize that Trump has sold his administration to corporate lobbyists and Wall Street. “He conned us,” was the most polite response I heard.

The big money that’s taken over American politics in recent years has created the biggest political backlash in postwar American history — inside both parties.

It’s splitting the Republican Party between its large corporate patrons and a base that detests big corporations and Wall Street.

Here’s a wild idea. What if the antiestablishment wings of both parties came together in a pro-democracy coalition to get big money out of politics?

Then it might actually happen.