The Democrats and Wall Street

For the last several years, Democrats have raised more money from Wall Street thanthe Republicans have. This has been true regardless of the party in charge. In 2006, when the Republicans still controlled both houses, the Democrats still got twice as much money from Wall Street.

That suddenly changed. The Democrats have been cut off. What happened?

Any relationship between Democrats and hard-core capitalists has to have some strain. The two reasons for donating to a candidate are because you support his positions in issues or because you expect to gain future influence. The Democrats have moved to the anti-capitalist, progressive left so you would not expect them to share many values with the kings of capitalism. Certainly that are some rich men like George Soros who are willing to pour money into candidates who, by all rights, should hate them, but even Soros has made it clear that he expects a return on his dollar.

This part gets interesting. Many corporations are quite willing to support measures that seem anti-capitalist as long as there is an advantage for them. Walmart was in favor of health care reform because they already provided it and were hoping that it would hurt their competitors. BP is one of many energy producers who expect to benefit from cap and trade. Apparently these companies felt that they could do business with the Democrats.

Then a funny thing happened - the Progressives, led by President Obama, started demonizing Wall Street. Obama started using the now-cliched "Wall Street vs Main Street" during his 2008 campaign. Suddenly everything that Wall Street does is held to scrutiny and assumed to be inherently wrong, if not outright evil. As an example, in the Ohio governor's race, Democrat Ted Strickland's campaign centers around his opponent, John Kaisich, having worked in the Ohio branch of Lehman Brothers. You would think that there would be something in Kaisich's 18 years in the House of Republicans worth mentioning but that seems to be nothing compared to a Wall Street connection.

So, after a year and a half of having their every move questioned, why would Wall Street executives continue to support Democrats?