It’s easy to forget that this campaign began with a major corporate backlash against Donald Trump’s speech announcing his candidacy for the presidency. For example, Macy’s severed their relationship with Trump because they didn’t want to be associated with a man who was calling Mexican-Americans a bunch of rapists. They later tried to soften their stance by saying that they wouldn’t carry a line of handbags sponsored by Hillary Clinton, either, but that was revisionism after the fact. The truth is that corporations don’t want people boycotting or simply avoiding their products and services because of their relationship with Trump.
Now that Trump is the Republican Party’s nominee, that’s driving a wedge between corporate America and the GOP, and, as former deputy press secretary for President George W. Bush, Tony Fratto, points out in the Boston Globe, it’s going to have a negative impact on Trump’s ability to raise money for the fall campaign.
“Even if you suspect Trump might win, if you contribute to his campaign, you’re buying a ticket on the crazy train. … You own everything that he does.”
Trump will do his best. Despite spending a good deal of time during the primaries castigating hedge fund managers for “getting away with murder,” he named Steven Mnuchin, chief executive of the hedge fund Dune Capital Management, on Thursday as his national finance chairman.
And if he can ever close his gap in the polls, he might actually find some people willing to give him money as a hedge against him actually winning. But, for now, the smart money is on Hillary.
“I think most Wall Street money will be with Hillary Clinton,” said Brian Gardner, a Washington analyst with investment bank Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc. “There are relationships there. There’s familiarity. So even to the extent that some people on Wall Street don’t support her policies, I think there’s just a comfort level with her versus Donald Trump.”
…Clinton is way ahead. Trump has raised only about $540,000 from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political money.
Clinton has raised more than $40 million from those industries. (Former Florida governor Jeb Bush still outpaces them all, having raised more than $68 million from the sector before he dropped out of the race.)
It’s true that Clinton’s cozy relationship with the financial sector is at the core of the support Bernie Sanders has enjoyed in his candidacy, but that’s a separate issue from whether Trump and GOP are going to be cash-starved in this election.
What Sanders’s strength has demonstrated is that there is pull in both directions, and Clinton is undoubtedly getting the message from both sides. On the one hand, a huge faction within her own party is calling for rough treatment of our corporate overlords, and this thirst isn’t confined to the left, but also helps explain as least part of Trump’s success. So, she has to be cognizant of that both as a candidate and as a potential president. On the other hand, part of the realignment we’re witnessing is a destruction of the GOP’s ability to count on corporate bigwigs for financial support.
It’s going to make it hard for them to compete, and it’s just a compounding factor that exacerbates the problem they’re having with internal divisions and their inability to use their media organs to speak with one voice. The things that have made conservative dominance possible over the last couple of decades are coming apart at the seams, and the ways the have won elections in the past are becoming inoperative strategies.
Without a money advantage, without a partisan media advantage, and without superior message discipline, they are going to be fighting with all their tentacles tied behind their backs. And they’ll be doing it while spitting into a demographic wind.
Clinton is the candidate of Wall Street!!
Can’t wait to vote for her in November.
God I hate this election.
Also the neo-cons are starting to fall in behind her as well.
Don’t say I didn’t tell you this would happen.
I predicted it a while ago.
Trump is going to allow Hillary to be Hillary, a liberal on social issues but at best a moderate on economics and foreign policy. Really the last task is to get through what I am sure her campaign regards as the rest of the Sanders foolishness.
And with that liberals and the left will be consigned to the desert until the 2024 Iowa Caucuses.
And I will keep telling myself: “The Supreme Court, the Supreme Court…”
“Trump is going to allow Hillary to be Hillary, a liberal on social issues but at best a moderate on economics and foreign policy.”
If you replace ‘Trump’ with ‘the Republican Party’ and ‘Hillary’ with ‘the Democratic Party,’ isn’t this the story of the modern political era?
Yeah, you did. Now we got Hillary the corporatist and trade advocate and a strong military to keep the world safe and open for trade. Wars or $15 an hour anyone?
CIA and NSA support Clinton, too (really).
Feel better?
so was Obama until he wasn’t anymore, I see it more as a move of survival at this point on their part
Because it was clearly obvious to that sector Romney > Obama; the safe-bet in 2008 was totally Obama over McCain.
Same goes for now, for the reasons stated in the quoted article. If it was Obama v. Trump, they’d go back to him.
Sanders…who the hell knows what they’d do. To them, a Sanders v. Trump match-up is how I feel about a Clinton v. Trump match-up.
they turned on him by 2010 but I get your point
Booman writes:
Yup.
Keep publicizing this.
It is precisely what Trump wants.
Remember Bre’r Rabbit’s plaintive plea to Bre’r Fox about not wanting to get thrown into the briar patch?
Here’s some of the Joel Chandler Harris version:
Like dat.
Watch.
AG
Over the years, Trump has donated over $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/donald-trump-donations-democrats-hillary-clinton-119071
Now he is giving the biggest donation of all- his candidacy.
Could be…
We shall see, soon enough.
AG
Very interesting theory. So between august and November, Trump takes a dive like Perot, urging his followers to vote for Clinton like Perot? Very interesting scenario. sad, but interesting as in watching the death of the republic in slow motion.
Is history repeating itself? Did the Roman Republic die when Caesar became Dictator in Perpetuity or was it earlier when Rome conquered Greece and became a wealthy Empire with extreme social stratification? Can any Empire be democratic? Was the British empire democratic? or did the rival parties all agree on the social order and foreign policy like neoconservatives and neoliberals, just arguing around the edges and mostly for personal power and wealth?
The expression “takes a dive” normally means “loses on purpose.” I didn’t mean that, I just meant his likelihood of winning is very low, although apparently he doesn’t think so. It’s hard to know what’s really going on in his mind. The general is a different universe from the primaries, especially for the republican Party and especially for such a candidate as Trump.
Trump may be the most peculiar of the Republican candidates, but they were all terrible. Oddly, it was Kasich who could have given Hillary the best run for the money.
This is the strangest election I’ve ever seen.
Yes, that’s the meaning I used.
I thought it would be Kasich too. This is a Black Swan year for sure.
It’s getting harder for the GOP to count on corporate bigwigs for financial support, but easier for the Democratic Party to count on corporate bigwigs for financial support.
Er, the vampire squid metaphor is more commonly used for Wall Street, not the Republican Party or its (T)Rump.
Specifically as a nickname for Goldman-Sachs. You know, the people who love Hillary’s insights so much they are willing to pay a quarter of a million dollars just to listen to the thought of Chairman Hill’ for 60 minutes?
Standard Oil in the old days was The Octopus in Thomas Nast cartoons.
Vampire squid is even worse.
We could be getting close to a realignment of the political poles whereby the Republican party becomes the party of insurgency and anti-elite protest, and the Democrats become the party of big business, establishmentarianism, and hawkish foreign policies. Not since the old slave-owning Democrats became the party of civil Rights has such a spectacular realignment been seen.
Yes, except that the Republican style of protest leads nowhere. Or if it leads anywhere, it will be to fascism.
In terms of American politics it’s a spectacular realignment. But for the Bilderberger Group it’s just a minor adjustment.
Bingo!
There is cheering amongst the Bilderberger’s, cheering in Bohemian Grove, as well as at Davos. Make of it what you will.
They would have to rediscover their Teddy Roosevelt roots and ditch the racism. Can you imagine believable trust-busting, anti-monopsony/monopoly, pro-regulation Republicans?
Could climate change dislocations produce this? But I suspect our elites have strategies in mind…
Only if Congress and state politics changes will this realignment in one year’s political donations mean anything.
Watch Koch money go exclusively to state and local government actors who will be their knights and squires.
Some other heavily identified “conservative” money might go the same way.
If Trump does win, watch Democrats suddenly become enthused about states rights.
And nullification? lol
This is really rich:
“Without a money advantage, without a partisan media advantage, and without superior message discipline, they are going to be fighting with all their tentacles tied behind their backs.”
That is not the way it has been on both sides of the aisle since the start of this election cycle. In the year of the open revolt against neoliberalism, that is the superior message and it needs no discipline, a partisan media advantage is not needed when you know how to get wall to wall media coverage for free. The more the Establishment hates Trump, the stronger he gets.
Everywhere I look for months, on the Booman Tribune, other blogs, online news, cable news, anywhere; it’s Trump, Trump and more Trump. The only news that is news is what Trump just said or tweeted and everyone’s reaction to it. Trump is defining and dominating this race even more than when he was just swatting away other weak Republicans including deep pockets Jeb. Even when Hillary does get an interview, the only questions they ever ask her is about Trump. Sad, but Hillary has no issues of her own worth talking about. Trump is defining the argument on his terms and he will win that argument on his terms. All Hillary can do is follow and react, proof once again that the DNC is not the sharpest tool in the shed. It’s not too late for the Democrats to wake the fuck up as AG would say.
well, that’s it, her only platform is Trump is scary.
Well, Trump is the king of free media, and I bet that isn’t going to change much in the general. Just like in the primary, Trump probably can get by spending less money on commercials than a normal candidate. At the same time, I would guess that the free coverage (MSNBC = the Trump show) isn’t going to help him as much with the general election audience because, unlike with Republican primary voters, they are probably looking for a little more substance than who he happened to insult that particular day. But then again, I wouldn’t want to make any predictions concerning the average intelligence of my fellow citizens…
I need more caffeine. I read the subject as “Fighting with their Testicles Tied.”
Come to think of it that would probably produce much shorter election cycles so maybe it’s not a bad idea.