This is interesting, and it contained some surprises, but I have a few quibbles.
1. "The Business Roundtable, is often characterized as a nonpartisan or bipartisan organization.... But nobody is truly apolitical..."
The same, of course, can be said of the New York Times.
2, We live "in an age when we increasingly see our business leaders filling the vacuum left by our political leaders..."
Sorkin cites US policy toward Saudi Arabia following the Khashoggi murder. But the executives who boycotted Saudi Arabia were not filling a vacuum. They were publicly challenging a Republican Administration's business as usual policy
3. "[I]’s important that the public fully understand the views of these unelected leaders."
Executives are not our leaders. They are accountable to shareholders -- who formally elect them and who indirectly elect them when they vote with their feet (the "Wall Street walk.") Executives are free to spend money from their wallets as they wish, but they have a fiduciary duty to spend the corporation's money in the interests of the corporation.
Every populist "knows" (apparently by some sort of divine revelation) that executives rule America. That claim is largely evidence-free, and I find it utterly unconvincing. (See, for example, S. Ansolabehere's "Why is there so little money in US elections," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2003).
3
I assume we are talking American business leaders since we are comparing support for 2 American political parties. It seems to me that there are a lot of pretty successful companies in Europe whose boards are designed to include union representatives. And these companies come from countries which are far more successful than the United States in terms of educational achievement, health outcomes, crime statistics, etc. So it begs the question: how do the executives from such places compare in their views?
The CEO only care about their bonuses. They use shareholder funds to stock buybacks to artificial increase earnings per share to receive outlandish salaries and bonuses. Paying a CEO more than $1m is a waste of stockholder money. The highest paid CEO do not generate any better return than those paid a lot less. The Boeing situation demonstrates the system is out of wack. Kill 359 passengers but insist the 737-Max should not be grounded. Why? Stock price and bonuses trumps passenger safety. However, workers pensions are eliminated , minimal salary increases and declining healthcare coverage. Let the workers eat cake!
2
Class warfare is real and it's clear who started it.
3
Many CEOs receive much of their compensation as stock options, which are taxed as capital gains if the shares are ultimately sold at a profit. Republican presidents and Congresses have consistently lowered capital gains taxes while Democrats have raised them. You know the rest.
4
I'm curious if this or any study looks at the next layer down in the companies. I recall a VP telling me she was told to donate to a certain campaign, where HQ was, and she didn't live in that state. Seems to me CEOs are hedging their bets, doing what they think will be best for their industry & wallet, because they don't know who will win.
Predominantly white males in positions of power give the majority of their donations to the Republican Party. I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you.
7
Thanks for this article that shines light on Big Money political party support. Following the money produces insights on how the violent policies over the past 50 years that have harmed people have been funded. See
https://www.legalreader.com/republican-racketeers-violent-policies/
1
Excellent article. I was a little surprised and angry at the number of shameless hypocrites involved. Really kind of a disgusting crowd. I wonder what planet they plan to have their kids live on when they have squeezed out every penny they can get with their selfish greedy hands. No need to worry about the future!
6
Republicans are always whinging about the "liberal bias" among university professors. How about we trade them a few English Departments for a more even-handed largess? "Affirmative action" should go both ways.
OK, that's a bad idea, since the plutocrats and kleptocrats would require a quid for the quo, and they already got the tax bill, which is bad enough already.
5
Two data points:
1. CEOs donate mostly to Republicans
2. CEOs have the highest incidence of psychopathy of all careers, up to 20x higher than the general population
Interesting correlation.
7
No surprise there! CEO’s always vote their pocketbook never the pocketbook of their employees and consumers. The tides will turn when Americans with pitchforks decide they have had enough and take to the streets. The aging Boomers and their debt laden children will unit and bring the fear of the masses to the worlds 1%.
5
They're hedging their bets - with two "parties" they have a 50-50 chance of being "right".
1
I knew this and I was just an Ed. Major at Temple.
3
This is surprising?! Most executives poor money into Republican coffers, even those who talk progressive on climate and other issues. They merely talk nice to seem nice when they are really acting terrible. Tim Cook supported Hillary and Paul Ryan so that even if she won she wouldn't be able to do anything. Most business leaders don't care about America or Americans. They only care about the amount of power they wield.
3
Everyone needs to read William Domhoff's Who Rules America?
It lays it all out, in detail, how the corporate power elite shape and dominate public opinion and national policy.
——————————
As to the study described here, I'll wager that the skew would be even more pronounced had they used a 60-40 indicator rather than a 66 2/3 to 33 1/3 one.
1
i think it would be an interesting study to not just sample CEOs of public companies, but the mindsets of small business owners as well. I would assume most of them would be Republican, except for maybe attorneys. Regulation is a big concern to small business because it is so expensive. larger companies can afford it. Pertinent regilation helps markets. However, liberal democrats over regulate sometimes and create scenarios where they through the baby out with the bathwater.
3
Actually, most Dem backed regulations are to PREVENT deaths of babies from being thrown out with the bath water. It getting poisoned down stream. Or those pesky regulations where you have to pay people a living wage if they work for/ add value to your business. I've yet to hear of an actual regulation that harms these businesses more than it helps people.
3
@sage43
Actually Democrats wants to eliminate socialism and that is anti-Republican. Democrats want corporate socialism ended so that ordinary taxpayers, you and me, don't always have to foot the bill to clean up coal ash ponds that spill over their banks and pay health care for workers with asbestosis. Time to end corporate welfare and tighten regulations to prevent them poisoning us.
1
The article notes a disconnect between various CEOs' tendency to donate Republican, but publicly espouse Democratic positions on cultural issues. That's not a hard one to figure out. It's called hypocrisy, and it's everywhere. Like mercury, it tends to be concentrated higher up on the food chain.
6
Money is more influential than education or facts (check out the recent college admissions scandal). So when conservatives complain about the "liberal biases" influences on college campuses and newspapers, "me thinks they doth protest too much".
2
Another possible explanation to consider: donations to Republicans may be have a greater return than donations to Democrats; not just because Republicans are for deregulation, but because Republicans may be more easily swayed by the donations.
4
It would be interesting to know the degree of divergence of business leaders diverge in what they say publicly and give in private. This would really help us all.
4
Why the gratuitous comment "after he lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College" referring to Trump? Last time I? checked, that's the way we've elected presidents since 1789. Is it ever possible for a Time. reporter to conceal their bias?
4
Given the context, I thought the reporter included that to show how voters were so closely split between the Democratic and Republican candidates in that election. The reporter had also said how during the time period studied, there had been both two-term Republican and Democratic presidencies. So I didn’t read it as bias, but as trying to show evenness between who Americans were electing.
8
@Allan H.
It may be the normal way since 1789, but it is rare than one wins the election while losing the popular vote by such large margin as Donald Trump.
Frankly I find the insistence that the media should be unbiased bizarre. Having a political leaning is not the issue with media. What is the issue is when media operates like say FOX News, clearly acting as a propaganda outlet, where all the news and comment is picked aggressively to promote a certain agenda.
I read both an economic liberal magazine (the Economist) and a communist news paper. Both have a clear bias, but they don't engage in propaganda. Both do quality journalism, just like The New York Times.
4
Just the facts, ma'am! Thank you. I love reading NYT "opinionists" where I am reassured that others besides myself know that the sky is falling. But columns such as this help us to get more clearly just who it is that's helping to bring it down on our heads. The power that resides in some, not because they were elected but because they have "means," gives me chills. "Get the Buck Out of Politics" goes the bumper sticker!
6
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith
12
The top 0.1% protects its interests. That should not come as a surprise in our plutocracy.
5
This is utterly unsurprising in a business world that is all about short term gain, and has been taught to believe that the financial bottom line is all that matters. They all know the monetary cost of everything and the social and civic value of nothing(unless it's a business expense for PR) , and they are ultimately headed for pitchforks if they don't wake up. It is unsustainable.
38
This study confirms what we know: American business leaders see the US as a mass market with big profits to be made from shrewd marketing of goods and services.
They, like Trump, have a transactional relationship with the nation that's predicated on return on investment (ROI) and cost-efficiency. America is where the money is, not a noble achievement of civilization that balances the rights of each with the responsibilities of all.
For CEOs politics is a business deal solely focused on profits and how government can facilitate and protect their markets. And while brazenly self-serving, business CEOs will align their corporate agenda with advocates of ideologies that fetishize wealth, elite privilege and hegemony.
Patriotism, corporate responsibility, public goodwill and trust are merely aspects of a corporate brand. Sophisticated marketing dictates how CEOs posture as stable geniuses who have uppermost in mind what's right for the country. As with all marketing the only purpose served is predisposing consumers to buy from one seller and not another because of a manufactured perception of one being more virtuous and caring than the others.
CEOs take the light out of enlightened: self-interest no longer incorporates the value of community and instead is narrowed to what's-in-it-for-me-now.
Tim Cook isn't neutral. He's the Titanic's captain: his job is to set a speed record and spur sales. He wants to avoid taxes not icebergs. He doesn't care if we sink.
15
It's not about supporting ideas or backing a candidate who is in favor of a set of policies. My takeaway is that political donations for these folks are not about consistent advocacy for a set of policy positions, but rather targeted investments to directly buy influence and blunt the desire of the purchased politician to regulate the company/industry of the CEO who's doing the buying.
Trump reports playing both sides to curry favor because that's what business people do. I'd be interested in how much of this money is given to incumbents opposed to challengers and how that compares to percentages of donations from all sources that go to incumbents. It seems that CEOs want certainty (status quo) and to not be investigated or regulated and that they will invest their dollars to those ends.
12
So...they give all this lip service to diversity, inclusion, support for the LGBT community, etc., yet they put their money on the Republican side of the scale. Hmm...I think another name for these guys (and, yes, they are mostly men) is hypocrite.
4
Wow!! Hold the presses!! A large majority of highly paid CEOs donate to Republicans? What a shock. Will the donations of trust fund babies now be studied? I'll bet I can save them the time and energy making that study.
1
They support Republicans but want their brands to be identified with Progressive causes because it is good for business. Hypocrites. They believe in one thing....the bottom line.
5
Given that the median income of these executives was recently reported to be $1m/mo. is anyone really surprised. Of course they vote for Republicans...keeping that money away from the government is an age old game.
5
The citizens united decision by the Supreme Court - what was the vote - the information they interpreted - is it clear to favor their decision - is it the legislators who wrote a bad law - do the big company’s own the justices - how could a so called democracy allow company’s to donate unrestricted amounts of money - are our elections being bought by the rich and powerful - are we becoming a banana republic - when justices are voted on by the Senate shouldn’t it be a supermajority vote in order to have highly qualified unbiased, apolitical members.
3
While the analysis and presentation of data is valuable, didn’t we already know that All Congressmembers and Senators are for sale? They are always on phone banks soliciting money for spending on TV, newspapers and internet - you know paying all those journalists through buying ads on their networks and periodicals.
We absolutely need to level the playing field with free TV time and put business titans on the same level as the rest of us.
4
@Suppan Not all are for sale, but certainly most are.
Well thank God it's still one person, one vote in America. While there might be only one CEO in the front office, there are usually hundreds if not thousands laboring under the sweat of their brow out on the front lines. And I can't think of a single CEO for whom I've worked the past thirty years whose vote agreed with mine.
1
Why is this result a surprise? Statistically, 90% of the Republicans you know are current Trump supporters. How many of them are vocal about it? Why should CEOs be any different? You can bet most of them, trained bottom-line optimizers, are registered Republicans-- so, if most of them are walking the walk, why is anyone surprised?
2
President Elizabeth Warren, anyone?
10
If we do not majorly check corporations and the 1% we will end up like Russia where the masses are allowed to slowly starve on potato and vodka.
Russia did it (call it autocracy, kingdom, KGBState) in 25 years!
4
@BG
Russians didn't influence anyone's vote any more than did John Oliver, James Corden, or Trevor Noah - three foreigners. Give voters more credit than just being unwitting dupes.
1
@sthomas1957
The comment did not refer to Russian election interference, but to the country's internal situation.
This is only *surprising* to Andrew Ross Sorkin. Perhaps he should have jotted this down in his private journal. I'm not sure it's newsworthy though for Times readers.
By the way, loved your meltdown over Amazon pulling out of NYC. If you're truly *against* subsidies as you claim, start now. If Amazon isn't a test case for you, I'm not sure what corporation could possibly qualify. They didn't pay sales taxes for their first 15 years in business – by which point they had shuttered every independent bookstore in the country, and Borders.
Really, you should stop pretending you're even a journalist if you're going to take up their case on TV and shout down anyone who questions you. The Times needs to hire journalists, not advocates for Amazon.
7
Back door, it's called lobbying.
1
@Calleen de Oliveira yes - or rather, especially since Citizens United: legal, official, and very public corruption.
3
This helps explain the Federal Government cutting taxes while pretending climate change won’t cost Trillions.......or just denying
That it exists. It is, no doubt, our biggest challenge and will result in our largest Federal debt.
Maybe these Corporations will simply declare bankruptcy like PG+E........or the leader of the party they are supporting?
4
Conservatives point to comparable rates of Democratic preference among professors at universities as proof that academia is prejudiced, closed minded, out of touch and even anti-American. They even argue for an affirmative action for conservatives.
Should we look at this as proof that big business and capitalism generally is the mirror image? Shoujld we push business to affirmatively hire the liberal for top jobs?
This study is incomplete. There is no mention of how much each CEO donated - $1000 or $10 to Republican candidates. Also, were additional donations made by CEOs to Political Action groups? How did the total dollar amount donated by Round Table members match up against donations made by unions such as SEIU?
Without that information the study is meaningless.
1
@Collie Sue
It is implied in the article that the study analyzed aggregate dollar values by CEO, though the author of this article did not explain that in detail. You can read the study for yourself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3355690
It isn't a study of union donations, and so they aren't mentioned.
@Collie Sue
Want to make the picture even more complete? Just want until you read these companies proxies. This is the first year that companies are required to report CEO pay as a percentage of all other employees' pay. When you see the corporate 'padding' you can track the Republican political influence contributions to CEO pay
1
How educational on the ethics of the business elite!
Why is it a surprise that business leaders lean Republican? A business' main purpose is to make profits and sadly almost irregardless of how they can do it. Republicans will bend over backwards to lower their taxes and regulations to enable business interests to make as much profit as "legally" possible.
They do this despite whatever the social, moral or diplomatic costs may be to the public, nation and citizens. That's because businesses have only one main purpose.
7
@Darsan54
By design, business has one purpose.
And the Russians who are the current dictators of Russia, are all "businessmen." Trump wishes the same for America.
1
@Darsan54
regardless means without regard
irregardless means not regardless, and it's not really a word
3
Andrew Sorkin performed a public service by reporting on the Harvard study and the difficult in divining the political inclinations and giving patterns of our nation's business leaders. As president of the Center for Political Accountability, I was pleased to see that the CPA-Zicklin Index was recognized as an important research tool for lifting the shroud on the source of political money -- and its impact.
6
" disclosures of political donations were highly correlated with the political leaning of its chief executive."
My guess is that contributing to this is widespread back-door compensation for so-called "individual" political contributions.
A friend who worked for a law firm told me years ago that if you want to make partner you have to "get along", which included buying $$$ tickets to Republican fund raisers.
6
"These executives wield enormous influence over not just policy, but the inclinations of their own employees. "
That is why I am worried about "no excuse" absentee voting. What is to prevent the head of a business from insisting that an employee fill out an absentee ballot under his direct supervision and direction?
Therefore having multiple days when a person can vote is a better solution to job/time constraints than no excuse absentee voting.
2
This is capitalism and U.S. capitalism has historically been conservative, so no surprise here. Generally, more national Democrats get elected when there is a need to corral or buy off the masses, or let some steam off, and buy some time to bring the situation back to where Republicans can be elected again. This was most recently evident in 2014, when the assumption was that Hillary would be elected President and so mainstream capitalists and their media, including "middle of the road" papers such as the Cleveland Plain-Dealer and Denver Post, supported Tea Party candidates as a counterweight.
As for Cook's donation to Paul Ryan, it undoubtedly had the same kind of purpose, both as a counterweight to a Democratic President and to support a Republican leader who he believed would stand up to a Democratic President, as well as the Republican Right and Trump. That was wishful thinking all the way around.
1
Unchecked Capitalism fosters Life nasty, brutish, and short.
16
not surprising at all. c suite executives are known to contribute to both parties for obvious reasons but heavily lean in the R party. the ethics are bottomless and the cash is the bottom line.
6
So we have corporate America to thank for Mitch McConnell, DJT and the GOP. I thought it was just the Kochs and Mercers who were this corrupt. Apparently corporate America is the one giving capitalism a bad name.
27
What would you expect? Top 0.1-1% will donate to the party or politicians who would protect the interests of wealthy 1% at the expense of everyone else. Shameful.
12
Harvard study confirms it: Everybody likes a bigger piece of pie. Who could have guessed?
Gordon Gecko nailed this quite some time ago: “Greed is good.” Or so the greedy would have us all believe.
5
Just vote for Elizabeth Warren. Warren will eat their lunch, break up the monopolies, dig into big business tax loopholes, and watch them like a hawk.
Let them support Republicans, in the end it's the people's vote that counts anyway.
20
@cherrylog754
Hopefully she breaks up Comcast and other Cable monopolies.
2
@cherrylog754 The idea that Warren would be able to much, if any, of what you suggest, let alone get elected, is far fetched. Heck, she's been goose stepping behind Trump on China policy. Maybe she'd be the one to start a war with them, just like Hillary advertised herself as wanting to go to war with Russia. Democrats are very useful for selling wars to the masses.
1
@cherrylog754 I know, right! I have not made up my mind, but if she continues to scare them, I'm all in for her.......just to watch Greed shake in it's boots.
4
Andrew Ross Sorkin concludes, “But now, more than ever, it’s worth knowing where the powerful figures in the business world are placing their bets.”
Bets?
Campaign contributions are not bets (a vote is also not a bet), and nothing in the research the column discusses indicates otherwise. The contributors are not gambling, they are buying political influence on one side of the aisle through repeated election cycles. If the contributions were bets, a lot more money would be going to Democratic candidates.
Senior corporate executives’ overwhelming preference for Republicans is the opposite of gambling. The executives are not trying to pick winners without regard to their personal political views. They are trying to make winners, and often succeeding, with their outsized campaign contributions. The executives then reap the rewards of deregulation and under-regulation, as well as raids on national wealth like the Trump tax cut.
Mr. Sorkin’s gambling analogy is wrong on the facts and grotesque as civics. An election is not a casino.
19
My intuition is that political contributions from corporate chiefs will be weighted towards the party that controls the House and Senate because that party controls the legislative process. Over the period of time studied, it seems like the Republicans had more years of Congressional control than the Democrats. Does the study reach any conclusions about the significance of Congressional leadership to the direction of CEO contributions?
4
The problem with letting corporations donate unlimited cash is that the cash comes from customers and employees, but the decision of where to donate comes from a small group of upper management and board members. These elite can take the resources of the stakeholders and apply in a way that goes AGAINST the interest of those stakeholders to the benefit of the lucky decision makers. This is wrong and needs to be fixed.
22
There are no surprises here. This kind of giving is transitional. There is a level of access all executives need both personally and for their companies, think of it as a legal pay to play.
As a former partner of a Wall Street firm I wrote checks annually to Sen Schumer when given a choice I would have much prefer to smash my hand with a sledge hammer. But he was and is seen as friend to the industry and access is far more important than personal political views.
10
What this says to me is the vast majority of CEO's believe their businesses engage in unethical, unlawful, and generally undesirable business practices that are likely harmful to their customers, employees, the environment, or the nation, which if known to the public would harm their business. The fact they are willing to forsake their morals for their money by supporting Republicans only proves the point.
So long as the Supreme Court equates political speech with money, its time the public exercises their right by not spending their money with these companies.
17
A few thoughts;
1. The Citizens United decision by the SCOTUS relied on the legal assumption that a corporation should be considered a "person." Okay; but if a corporation is a person for the purposes of political activities, it should support the country the same way a real physical person does. That is, it should pay taxes using a form 1040, just like I do. No more 20 percent tax rates; no more deductions for improvements to the business; no more of the tax breaks that corporations get but people do not get. You're a person, pay like a person.
2. To the extent that CEOs direct corporate money to candidates and PACs, they should be reminded that they are executives, not owners of the corporation. The stock holders should be polled on whether to give to particular candidates and PACs.
3. There used to be a time when corporations cared about stakeholders, not just the subset of stakeholders that were called stockholders or executives. They used to, or some of them, anyway, care about all the stakeholders: employees, neighbors, the environment, the cities and towns in which they resided. All that and more, including stockholders, too.
39
@Peter Limon And if a corproration is a person, according Constitutional amendment, one may not own persons.
6
@Peter Limon Oh yes, there are so many ironies and inconsistencies inherent in the idea that corporations are people. Yikes, yes pay a few taxes.
3
@Peter Limon - 100% Yes, yes, and yes! Right on.
2
"But for shareholders of all political leanings who rely on transparency and disclosure, the politics of a chief executive might be a more important factor than expected."
Sure. That way restaurants can deny them services. Protesters can harass their kids. People can blow horns outside their houses. And shaming of all types can be refined, expanded and perfected.
"Our political discourse is as divided today as it has been any time since the Civil War."
So what exactly are you aiming to achieve? Certainly this would polarize discourse to an even greater degree.
How about we try to find ways to make discourse more civil instead. Stop demonizing those who hold different opinions. And try to understand those differences without immediately assuming that it's a sign of moral depravity.
3
@Dred
Alas, when one side is willing to cheerfully deny facts to the advance their oft hidden agenda(s), it becomes impossible to hold civil conversations of any value.
(Hence, me thinks, the source of trolling by the right wing.)
6
I think it may be more accurate to say, one way or another, these guys are ‘investing’ other peoples’ money.
7
A CEO is only as good as the success of their company. As we know talk is cheap, it's the actions that count. CEO's may have a public persona that leans Democratic but when it comes to business, they act like Republicans; but that's not news.
5
Given the GOP platform of lower taxes, less regulation, and anti-union formation, company executives support the group that will increase business success. What we have today is companies profiting while their workers struggle and CEOs/top execs who are handsomely rewarded with salaries and stock options. Since most large US companies view themselves as being transnational or no-nationality, they feel free to move operations to the lowest cost locale and freely add/fire their workers. Hence, firms and their executives prosper while the other 95% exist on the crumbs.
15
Corporations have consistently said their priorities are only to their investors rather than to this country and the communities where they are located. As a result, they should not be allowed to contribute to political campaigns or have influence on governmental policies. They shouldn’t be allowed to have their cake and eat it too.
37
CEOs overwhelmingly support GOP. In other news, water is wet.
77
Andrew, why are you “surprised” that the white dudes who came of age and to power during the new golden age of corporate profiteering and inter-locking directorate-fueled excessive compensation identify as and contribute heavily to their sponsored Republican politicians? These are the people who called for lower taxes and regulation-free reign. Wake up and smell the corporatocracy.
40
They get what they pay for, you can bet on that.
22
American dysfunctionalism. Greed and conservatism.
41
I have no clue how any rational individual can donate money to Republicans today, given the blind support that party provides for this "president."
31
@Chuck Baker
Here's the clue you are looking for: $$
4
Today's GOP is morally bankrupt, a political and ecological disaster in progress. Good for all those CEOs! Who cares about anything but the bottom line?
16
Maybe the causality runs the other way. The mercantile party is either more for sale or better at blackmail. Money may not be as useful a lever for liberals?
1
American capitalist leaders support plutocracy. That is what they vote for and that is what they have brought on. They were on board with the Powell Memorandum, the 'Reagan Revolution' and Citizens United, they control the Supreme Court and the Presidency and their President Trump openly proclaims that he has no problem with his fans slaughtering their liberal opponents and anyone else should the 2020 election not go his way. The next couple of years should indeed be interesting.
29
There was a Greek restaurant next to my work place. It was run by a man and his brother-in-law. They had a function hall and did a lot of business with the city. The owner gave generously to the Democrats. His brother-in-law gave generously to the GOP. Not on the same level as Tim Cook, but the same concept. All bases covered. Never forget that the business of America is..business.
9
The Republican party has for a very long time been the mercantile party, the political organization to which the owner's of businesses, banks, holders of stocks and enterprises large and small gravitate. The magic trick is how they get people who live paycheck to paycheck to join in. The subtle and not-so-subtle appeals to racist sentiments across the southern tier of states is one answer, but not the only one.
During the Vietnam war and the "hippie" era of the late 1960s and through the '70s, the Democrats allowed themselves to be typecast as the party of free love, open abortions and social experimentation generally. How? Because they did not actively condemn many trends shaping the nation. Even with Carter and Clinton in the White House, they never recovered.
Republicans have cultivated an image of the party for those who see too much social change overwhelming their lives. The anti-immigrant appeal is one more piece in the puzzle showing how Republicans get wage earners to vote in favor of millionaires and billionaires. The promise of tax cuts, even if they are so small for most as to be almost meaningless, represents a statement, "We are on your side."
The Republicans appeal on an emotional level first, policy last. Even people whose lives have been saved by Obamacare have said over the years they are against it. This kind of emotionalism cannot be countered by facts. Now, Trump is all emotion all of the time while he goes about helping the rich get richer
43
@Doug Terry The Democrats, under JFK and Johnson, were the party that sent thousands of young American men to die pointlessly in Vietnam. No one who lived through that era would see them as the party of “free love”, no matter how much the revisionists have attempted to paint them that way.
2
What people don't understand -- but this article makes clear -- is the lopsided nature of political fundraising. I worked for the Democrats in the 1990s. We figured, even then, that Republicans were outspending us roughly 3-to1 -- not all of it reflected in campaign finance reports. Generally, we held our own because we had better candidates, a more attractive platform for voters and a better grassroots organization, much of it provided by organized labor. Labor didn't give us large sums of money, but they gave us union members who showed up and knew how to run a campaign. Still, we were desperate for money and that meant we made massive compromises to business groups for fairly piddling sums. Clinton's 'Third Way' platform run via Al From and his Democratic Leadership Council reframed Republican 'lite' policies as Democratic Party priorities. In the process, Democrats turned their back on long-term pledges to protect the poor and middle class. Obama was no better. He might have been worse. At any rate, both candidates sold out the party's base in search of political contributions and suburban Republican votes. Abandoned, the party's 'blue wall' in the upper Midwest finally crumbled. Hillary Clinton finally reaped what she and her husband had sowed. Older middle class voters who took a big hit in the economic downturn clearly felt they were no longer represented by the Democratic Party. It was not true, but it's certainly easy to see why they thought so.
53
“But the overwhelming nature of the support for the G.O.P. is surprising, given the outspoken positions a number of executives have taken in recent years on social issues like climate change, guns and immigration policies.”
These things pale in comparison to low wages and frightened, insecure workers, which is what Republicans deliver to the executives who fund them. The reason Republicans are so rabidly anti-worker is because they know that they, in collusion (yes, I said collusion) with the American “business community,” are re-creating the conditions that led to the first labor movement. And they are bound and determined not to let that happen again.
24
@pedigrees
"Rabidly anti-worker"? Seriously. Unemployment is below 4%. Feel like you're mistreated? Change jobs.
Then there's this.
Tech businesses like Amazon pay an average wage over $100k a year. They provide free food, great work environments. The best health care in the world. Generous vacation and retirement packages. Stock options. And if you think Amazon is an outlier. Think again.
Increasingly, the road to business prosperity is paved by very well paid and well treated employees.
But NY says "no, you're not welcome here". Warren wants to break them up.
So what am I to believe? You or my own eyes.
3
@Dred
The average Amazon salary may be slightly over $100k, but the median pay (as least as of 2017) is $28,446. In other words, half of the employees make more than that, half make less. Bezos and a handful of others probably make enough to skew the overall average way up. And Amazon keeps prices low due to their efficiency--in other words, overall fewer jobs and lower wages compared to the smaller competitors they put out of business, and the money that leaves local communities when people shop online instead of locally is unlikely to come back in most cases except in the form of government employees payed as a result of taxes collected.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/19/technology/amazon-employee-salary/index.html
I don't know if Amazon should be somehow broken up, but overall it's hard to argue that they aren't helping to drain money from local communities and concentrating wealth in the hands of fewer people.
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@Dred Cherry Pointing to a relatively few jobs like a software engineer for a few FAANG companies and maybe similar jobs in finance and the nominal BLS U-3 unemployment rate is not "the economy" for many if not most people, anymore than the Dow Jones Index or GDP.
It's a canard that anyone can "change jobs", even people with appropriate STEM credentials and pedigrees are undercut by H-1A visa holders or jobs outsourced. Age discrimination is an issue here as well: 37 is "old".
And while not getting into the weeds of how wonderful jobs are at the company you cite, I seem to recall this article in the pages of this paper about it being a "bruising workplace" and much notoriety surrounding it,
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html
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The only way to facilitate fairer elections is to ban all contributions from corporations. Individual contributions should not exceed $1000. And limit election camp;aigns to one month.
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@Subhash C Reddy
To do that, we first need to pass a Constitutional amendment saying that corporations are nor people.
4
Campaign finance reform is the only way we'll start to clean up our government. Money from corporations and wealthy donors is uneven representation that hurts everyone. Money corrupts.
Government for sale...
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Re "in an age when we increasingly see our business leaders filling the vacuum left by our political leaders"
This trend is not accidental. It's the desired outcome of the Republican playbook: hamstring government to the point of that it's totally ineffectual, and so as a result, business gets *all* the business.
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Is Mr. Sorkin the only one one in American to whom it's news ("surprising"?) that business executives vote their short-term financial interests, no matter how egregious the candidates who promote those interests, no matter how disastrous Republican governance proves to be and no matter what lies the candidate or his party tells?
Tim Cook promoting Paul Ryan? What a wonderful object study!
17
Publicly funded elections.
No organizational (corporate, church, union, PAC, etc.) donations allowed.
A low three digit limit on individual contributions to a given campaign.
Anyone can say or write anything--express support, express criticism. That's free speech. But monetary campaign donations are not in the same category, and need to be limited. And group entities are not people, and so cannot be said to be exercising free speech rights (no matter what corporate lawyers may claim).
'Nuff said.
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@Glenn Ribotsky
I don't think we should have publicly funded elections, I think candidates should have to attract money from individuals and depend much more on volunteers.
I agree on banning money from PAC, corporations and unions, churches, etc.
An appropriate limit on individual contributions would be in the low 4 digits - something like $2,500 IMHO.
I doubt even this will end skullduggery in campaign, however. We can see enough corruption & cheating in most areas of our society judging by recent events.
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@Bob in Pennsyltucky
I forgot to add that corporations and unions in particular have many people's money and not all would agree to support a particular candidate or issue even if it is good for the organization.
I can say that as a former union member and a shareholder in some corporations.
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@Bob in Pennsyltucky
However, a big difference is that the money unions contribute are primarily donated PAC money (not dues as for federal elections, and many state elections, dues money cannot be used for contributions). Corporate money comes in part from profits from customers who do not know or have any say (either direct or through elected representatives) in who contributions go towards.
7