PARTY REALIGNMENT
Responsive Politics, Wall Street contributed more than $74 million directly to Biden’s campaign. Conversely, they only gave Trump $18 million, even less than the $20 million he received in 2016. Their reason for preferring Biden? Trump’s lack of “predictability,” said one unnamed GOP adviser. In other words, with Biden, the system will become easy to control again. And it’s not just Trump who is getting shorted by the financiers... It’s the rest of the GOP as well. Of Wall Street’s total 2020 contributions, not only to campaigns but to all political organizations, including “dark money” groups, 62% went to Democrats and 38% went to Republicans. Comparatively, in 2016, they gave 50% to Republicans and 49% to Democrats. In 2012, they gave 69% to Republicans and 31% to Democrats. The Chamber of Commerce, which has long been the top-spending lobbying client, endorsed 30 Democratic House candidates in the 2020 election. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal , the Chamber’s Executive Vice President Neil Bradley explained why... Members of the Republican Party had embraced populist positions on trade and immigration with Donald Trump’s rise. This was a big problem for the Chamber, which, for example, spent about $26 million in the fourth quarter of 2018 lobbying against Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Bradley expressed further disappointment by writing off many Republicans’ calls to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to China and other countries as “too simple.” With some members of the Democratic Party embracing socialism on
So is the Democratic Party becoming the party of Big Business, while the GOP will now be a workers’ party? Republican Senators like Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, and even Ted Cruz have used the phrase “working class” to describe their party’s future base. The idea of a party realignment might not be arising out of anything the GOP is accomplishing (even their own constituents are unhappy with them), but out of what the Democrats are in large part no longer doing – namely, looking out for workers. What is certain is that the Democratic Party is becoming the party of corporate, tech, and financial power. The idea of a party realignment might not be arising out of anything the GOP is accomplishing (even their own constituents are unhappy with them), but out of what the Democrats are in large part no longer doing – namely, looking out for workers. In January 2020, when the Democratic primary elections were about to begin, President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti met with 90 Wall Street donors to tell them it was time to fund Biden’s efforts against the other candidates. After Biden finished off his opposition, Obama’s former defense secretary urged Goldman Sachs staffers to place a big bet on Biden against Trump.
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January 2021
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