Andrew Ross Sorkin: Is Big Business the Democrats’ New Best Friend?

Andrew Ross Sorkin has a new article in the New York Times in which he basically explains that Joe Biden’s Democratic Party is evolving into the Whig Party or the old Republican Party.

New York Times:

“It might seem even more strange to see Democrats teaming up with big business. But Democrats, especially the more progressive members of Congress who made their careers bashing big business and corporate money in politics, may need to rethink their friends, too. Big business has become one of the most powerful forces in the country to advance social equity issues.

Companies from Netflix to Citigroup got behind Black Lives Matter last summer; boycotts, including by the National Basketball Association’s All-Star Game, pushed North Carolina to repeal a law preventing transgender people from using restrooms that match their gender identity; and now, companies are speaking out against efforts that disproportionally suppress minority votes.

While business still gives more money to Republicans than Democrats, in recent election cycles an increasing amount of corporate money has been moving toward Democrats. When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently began backing a few more Democrats, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, accused the trade group of purging “most, if not all, of its real Republicans in top ranks.” …

“American big business in particular has led the way toward making America more socially inclusive,” Tyler Cowen, an economist, wrote in his book “Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero.” But Mr. Cowen also noted that it is “profit maximization alone — not to mention the consciences of some C.E.O.s” — that “puts big business these days on the side of inclusion and tolerance.”

Progressives need to rethink who their friends are these days. Corporate America is on the side of progressive activists now. Big Business has become “one of the most powerful forces in the country to advance social equity issues.” Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are the good guys now.

FDR’s New Deal coalition was a populist-progressive coalition. Progressives have taken over the Democratic Party though. They have alienated and driven out the populists by taking extreme stands on social issues like immigration, trans and political correctness or wokeness. Joe Biden is the guy who finished off and buried the New Deal coalition. Progressives are now allied with Big Business. They have cozied up to the “money power” or the “economic royalists.” It is an Eastern party now of coastal elites like the Whig Party in the antebellum era or the Republican Party in the early 20th century.

The Democratic Party is now defined by upper class professionals who take politically toxic stands on unpopular social issues: open borders (Abolish ICE), crime (Defund the Police), trans, political correctness or wokeness, censorship and civil liberties (our critics are “far right domestic extremists”).

I missed this last month.

Harry Enten explained why Republicans are wise to seize on this issue. Far more people dislike political correctness or wokeness than like the Republican Party and its policies.

CNN:

“While Democrats may mock them, the fear of cancel culture and political correctness isn’t something that just animates the GOP’s base. It’s the rare issue that does so without alienating voters in the middle.

We can see this well in the 2020 American National Elections Studies’ pre-election survey. This academic survey asks questions on a bunch of topics. This includes a question about political correctness, which, if anything, is a less extreme version of cancel culture.

Respondents were asked whether they thought people needed to change the way they talked to be with the times or whether this movement had gone too far and people were too easily offended.

People being too easily offended won by a 53% to 46% margin over people needing to change the way they talked.

Keep in mind, the voters in this sample claimed they had either voted or would vote for Biden over Donald Trump by a 53% to 42% margin. This just gives you an idea of how much more popular the opposition to cancel culture and political correctness is than the baseline Republican presidential performance.

Perhaps more intriguing for the GOP is why political correctness is more popular than the party itself: the age gap on the question, while existent, was quite small. …

In other words, the Republicans really do seem to be making a smart political play. Of course, it may be their only political play.”

I’m pleased for once with this change in Republican strategy.

This is actually what I consider the single most important issue in American politics. For everyone who has been “canceled” by outrage mobs over the past thirty years, this is primarily an economic issue that has denied them vast opportunities in life which have instead gone to the class of people who conformed and parroted all the stupid slogans and values of our degenerate neoliberal elites.

Progressives seem to have the misconception that the people who dislike “cancel culture” are outraged by silly things like Dr. Seuss books. In reality, they are outraged at being culturally and economically stifled by this ridiculous culture, which they despise. They are sick of being censored and policed by progressive commissars on social media. They are sick of being scolded and attacked by “journalists.” They are sick of walking on eggshells and self censorship and always looking over their shoulder for brats.

It is a great thing that Republicans have recently latched onto our traditional grievances like immigration and political correctness. By amplifying those issues, they are advancing our cause. They are getting their own voters mad about these issues. It doesn’t really matter whether it is a cynical election strategy or helps them win the 2022 midterms. Putting the real issues front and center cannot but help us.

Jonathan Chait has a new article on Corporate Republicans in the post-Trump era.

NY Mag:

“And yet, last Monday, here was McConnell treating the spectacle of business leaders engaging in political debate as a stark threat to be extinguished. The provocation was a series of corporate statements denouncing Republican-sponsored voting restrictions, which McConnell described as “a coordinated campaign by powerful and wealthy people to mislead and bully the American people.” McConnell, invoking a spate of Republican proposals to punish firms that speak out against their vote-suppression laws, warned, “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country.” …

The phantasmal threat of government intimidating business leaders for exercising their First Amendment rights, which McConnell had once invoked to ward off any limits on their ability to use financial leverage over elections, had suddenly become real. And the source of the threat is McConnell himself. A few days’ worth of large corporations condemning voter suppression has left the Republican leader so thoroughly rattled that he’s thrown away decades of laborious work reputation-building on the single issue that is the foundation of his worldview. …”

Last time I checked, Mitch McConnell’s approval rating was dogshit even within the Republican Party. No one likes the True Cons policy agenda. They don’t like Mitch McConnell’s slavish subservience to Corporate America. McConnell might have a history of sucking up to Corporate America, but the ground underneath him has radically shifted. Many of these new Trump voters have never had a high opinion of either Corporate America or True Conservatism. This is especially true after what happened last summer when Corporate America bankrolled Big Fag and the Black Lives Matter insurrection.

PMC TV weighed in on this last night.

They mostly focused on Mitch McConnell’s volte face and accused him of hypocrisy. They missed the real story which is McConnell’s unpopularity in his own party and the fact that White populist voters are dominate now on social issues and nearly so on economic issues as well.

McConnell wasn’t making an empty threat. In another election cycle or two, we will cross a demographic tipping point and the majority of Republican voters will be populist on economics. The number is currently hovering around 40%. Corporate America is throwing gasoline on the fire.