No, not in presidential polling but where it really matters, the battle for Goldman Sachs.
Employees at Goldman Sachs, one of Wall Street's most high profile companies, donated nearly $250,000 to the former Massachusetts governor over the past three months. President Obama raised $127,000 from Goldman for himself and the Democratic National Committee over that same period. In 2008 Obama raised more than a million dollars from Goldman, the single biggest corporate donor to his campaign.
So it appears that the Great Vampire Squid will not again be the President's biggest corporate donor, but we need not fret about his ability to raise money from the BANX. He's doing just fine, thank you very kindly.
...[F]inancial sector employees are giving at a greater rate to his re-election bid than during his last campaign.
One-third of the funds hauled in by Obama's big-money backers came from executives and others linked to the financial world, according to a report from the Center for Responsive Politics released on Friday.
The financial sector accounted for about 20 percent of what Obama's top fundraisers raised during his 2008 bid.
Let me repeat: this time around, a higher percentage of money is coming from people tied to financial industry. When trying to explain President Obama's political decisions, many people, favoring a ideological interpretation, tend to overlook one of the most important factors, his desire (perceived need) to raise boatloads of money from Wall Street.
On the other hand, it's hard to distinguish between the practical aspect (the desire to raise cash from Wall Street) and the ideology (Rubinite neoliberalism). When the BANX took over the Democratic Party in the eighties, most visibly in the form of Clinton's first Treasury Secretary, they offered not only a policy platform -- austerity, unfair trade, deregulation -- but also an opportunity to tap into the bank accounts of thousands of millionaires. Clinton and Terry McAuliffe must have drooled. A chance to reinvent the Democratic Party as "pro-business" and access to Wall Street's millions: what could go wrong?
The Democrats ties to Wall Street only increased after Clinton left. In the 2006 election cycle, Dems -- under the guidance of Wall Street Democrats Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emmanuel -- out-raised the GOP on Wall Street. That's right: it was with Wall Street money that Dems bought their Congressional majorities -- a dubious victory, indeed.
Schumer, 55, and Emanuel, 46, are capitalizing on their ties to hedge and private-equity funds to boost Democratic fund raising from the industry. Schumer is a New York City native and counts Wall Street as a constituency. During his 2004 re-election campaign, he raised more money from hedge-fund executives than any Democrat in Congress.
``It is our good fortune that a lot of these people happen to live or work in New York and that Chuck Schumer knows them,'' says Phil Singer, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee led by Schumer.
Emanuel, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is a former managing director of the New York investment firm Wasserstein Perella Group, now owned by Frankfurt-based Dresdner Bank AG. He was finance chairman of President Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and also has a foot in the hedge-fund industry.
During the 2008 election cycle, Wall Street covered its bets, showering all the top contenders with money. During the primary, Barack Obama pulled off the impressive feat of raising as much money on Wall Street as two New Yorkers, Rudy Guiliani and Hillary Clinton, and during the general election he nearly doubled John McCain's haul.
For all the whining from bankers about financial reform (how dare the government not give us 100% of what we demand!), President Obama is, as I mentioned above, still raking it in on Wall Street. The Democratic Congressional Committees are, however, taking a bit hit. This could be a positive development, a severing of the party's ties to the banks, but the Democratic leadership is likely to do what can to win them back.
Henry Waxman has reportedly been beating up on the President in meetings -- fair enough -- but if he wants to do something to help his party long-term, he could set about trying to loosen Wall Street's grip on it. But it was Waxman who last year, trying to keep Wall Street in the fold, boasted about -- I shit you not -- Democrats being more in favor of the bank bailouts than Republicans. (Unlinked because the only source I could find is Huffpo.)
Diaries like this inevitably prompt people to talk about public financing, but no serious funding reform could make it through a government dominated by Wall Street and other corporate interests. And money isn't the only means by which Wall Street exerts control over the Democratic Party; there's also access, think tanks, PR, and a culture that treats bankers, even ones who have failed, as VIPs. Short of developing a whole new party, the answer is to win the battle for control of the Democratic Party. Progressive populists -- or, if you prefer, labor liberals -- need to crush the Wall Street wing of the party. Rubinism must die.
Bonus Link. RTWT.
In April 2004, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney grew concerned that John Kerry was getting too much of his economic advice from the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party. Kerry had just completed his primary sweep. In the general election, he would need the unions. Sweeney proposed a private meeting to discuss living standards as a campaign issue, and the candidate invited the labor leader to his Beacon Hill home. Sweeney arrived at the Kerry manse, bringing his policy director, Chris Owens, and Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute. There, seated in the elegant living room, were Robert Rubin and two longtime lieutenants: investment banker and former Rubin deputy Roger Altman, and fellow Clinton alum Gene Sperling—Kerry’s key economic advisers.
In a three-hour conversation, the group discussed the deficit, taxes, trade, health care, unions, and living standards. The labor people urged the candidate to go after Wal-Mart’s low wages. Rubin countered that a lot of people like Wal-Mart’s low prices. Kerry eventually announced that the meeting needed to wrap up, because “Bob has to get back to Washington.” Rubin responded that, no, he could stay as long as Kerry wanted. Sweeney and his colleagues were ushered out the door; Rubin, Altman, and Sperling remained. “Wall Street was in the room before we arrived,” says Faux, “and they were there after we left.”