Democrats: Bankers 'R Us
Harold Meyerson
American Prospect
Posted 08/11/2011 at 08:54 AM
David Callahan notes today that with its conversion to an adjunct of the Tea Party, the Republicans—historic home of the nation’s financial elites—have sent those elites streaming (and screaming) towards the Democrats. David is surely right, and, as he notes, this is the latest step in the decades-long story of Wall Street’s partisan realignment—and the corollary story, which is the Democrats’ growing subservience to finance.
The modern Democratic Party (dating from FDR) always went to Wall Street for key Cabinet positions and such, which is how the likes of Dean Acheson, John McCloy, C. Douglas Dillon, Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Tim Geithner ended up in positions of power. The Wall Streeters who served Democratic presidents, though, were either Democrats themselves or Rockefeller Republicans, whose ideological divergences from mainstream Democrats weren’t necessarily all that great.
But the post-Reagan movement of Wall Streeters into Democratic ranks is nonetheless a distinct phenomenon. To begin, it’s been powered in part by the revulsion many of these folks have felt at the Republicans’ growing social conservatism and anti-empiricism. The partisan shift of bankers in reaction to the GOP’s growing no-nothingism in this regard parallels the larger shift of professionals into Democratic ranks, which Ruy Teixeira and John Judis have ably charted.
(More here.)
American Prospect
Posted 08/11/2011 at 08:54 AM
David Callahan notes today that with its conversion to an adjunct of the Tea Party, the Republicans—historic home of the nation’s financial elites—have sent those elites streaming (and screaming) towards the Democrats. David is surely right, and, as he notes, this is the latest step in the decades-long story of Wall Street’s partisan realignment—and the corollary story, which is the Democrats’ growing subservience to finance.
The modern Democratic Party (dating from FDR) always went to Wall Street for key Cabinet positions and such, which is how the likes of Dean Acheson, John McCloy, C. Douglas Dillon, Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Tim Geithner ended up in positions of power. The Wall Streeters who served Democratic presidents, though, were either Democrats themselves or Rockefeller Republicans, whose ideological divergences from mainstream Democrats weren’t necessarily all that great.
But the post-Reagan movement of Wall Streeters into Democratic ranks is nonetheless a distinct phenomenon. To begin, it’s been powered in part by the revulsion many of these folks have felt at the Republicans’ growing social conservatism and anti-empiricism. The partisan shift of bankers in reaction to the GOP’s growing no-nothingism in this regard parallels the larger shift of professionals into Democratic ranks, which Ruy Teixeira and John Judis have ably charted.
(More here.)
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