The Case for Trump: The Top 1% Are Ready For Hillary

In spite of Trump’s tax plan, the top 1 percent are rallying behind Hillary because she is the neo-liberal candidate:

“Polls may still show a relatively competitive presidential race, but Hillary Clinton is winning a fundraising landslide among the country’s 1 percent.

Newly released campaign finance reports through the end of July show that upper-crust Republicans are not backing Donald Trump even though the majority of the party’s base supports the nominee. The result is a campaign without precedent in more than a century, with elites on both sides of the aisle and from nearly every sector of American industry overwhelmingly supporting Clinton.

Well-heeled GOPers may disagree with Clinton’s policies, but she appeals to people that benefit from the status quo, said Bob Biersack, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics. Her policy proposals are less drastic than Trump’s, and her long history in politics makes her more predictable.

Meanwhile, hundreds of former top givers to Republicans are switching teams and giving to Clinton’s candidacy instead. Several hundred donors who gave to a Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 primary are now funding Clinton in the general election. Through July, these 851 donors gave $5.4 million to Clinton’s campaign committees and Super PACs, an average donation of $6,345 per person. …”

Among the ultra rich, the 2016 race has become a contest between national populism and globalist neo-liberalism. The big donors who financed Romney, Marco, and ¡Jeb! have switched sides. It’s not just Wall Street. In fact, the big donors across 9 out of 10 sectors of the American economy are all for Hillary.

This is an incredible quote:

“Crowdpac splits the American economy into 10 broad industry categories; according to their tally, nine of these have given substantially more money to Clinton’s campaign committee and Super PAC than Trump’s. The only industry to favor Trump was agriculture, with $1.2 million raised for Trump compared to Clinton’s $977,000.

You need to go all the way back to 1896 to find another election in which the country’s economic elites so disproportionately favored one candidate. Then as now, a fiery populist denouncing a rigged system unexpectedly snatched a major party nomination. That man, Democrat William Jennings Bryan, raised $300,000. Meanwhile, American industry rallied behind Republican William McKinley and stuffed his campaign coffers with a then unheard-of $4 million. …

Since then, no other candidate has been so decisively outraised. Even other “outsider” candidates like Barry Goldwater and George McGovern had wealthy constituencies that dug into their deep pockets. But Trump seems to have no natural ideological or business financial base. Even among donors in the real estate industry, where Trump spent his entire career, Clinton is outraising him $9.5 million to $1.1 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”

You would have to go all the way back to William Jennings Bryan vs. William McKinley in 1896 – 120 years ago – to find a race in which the American oligarchy has more lopsidedly favored one candidate than Hillary Clinton.

As I said in The Case for Trump: This Is Our Best Shot, Trump could be a freak occurrence – a rogue billionaire with celebrity star power – who was able to break through the two party stranglehold on the neo-liberal system at a vulnerable moment. Like William Jennings Bryan in 1896, this populist moment might come again like Halley’s Comet. We might have to wait 120 years to see another Trump.

Note: William Jennings Bryan ran again in 1900 and 1908, but the populist moment faded after his defeat in 1896.