The often insightful Joel Kotkin weighs in with a populist look at how both parties are sucking up to Wall Street. His
article, from the
Orange County Register, is illustrated with a delightful cartoon of a very fat cat, wearing business attire and smoking a cigar. See who Kotkin identifies as the Democrats' new base:
From their bastions, from Seattle and Los Angeles to New York, big city Democrats have started imposing a classic left-wing program of higher minimum wages, more support for public employees, limits on police and Draconian “green” policies, notably favoring expensive renewable fuels and forced densification.
This program may not help or appeal much to the middle or working class Democrats who historically supported the party but it fits in well with its current base of the dependent poor, government workers, socially liberal professionals and rent-seeking businessmen, for whom such things as “green” energy and high-density development often represent opportunities for plundering the public.
I like Kotkin's formulation of "the dependent poor, government workers, socially liberal professionals and rent-seeking businessmen." That sounds to me like much of today's Dem. base. He could have added "any who view themselves as victims." He concludes both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are Wall Street darlings, and if both are nominated:
Bush-Clinton constitutes a supreme win-win for Wall Street. Unlike Obama, who occasionally would at least snarl at them, they can look forward, under either Bush or Clinton, to a continuation of policies that allow the financial elites to dominate the economy, albeit often to the detriment of the vast majority.
