Jamie Dimon is the CEO of JPMorgan and describes himself as “barely a Democrat.”

His name has often been floated as a potential candidate for president, and at 68, he seems positively youthful compared to the two frontrunners for president this year. He could run 4 or 8 years from now and still get consideration–although you can bet that Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Gretchen Whitmer…well, you get it, a lot of Democrats are ahead of him in line for the top slot. They wouldn’t roll over to let him take the top prize.

Not only that, Dimon doesn’t exactly match the mood of the party. He is more in line with the George H.W. Bush wing of the American electorate, which hardly exists as a political force anymore.

In 2019, Dimon told CNBC he considers himself “barely a Democrat,” adding, “my heart is Democratic, my brain is kind of Republican.”

Asked in April by CNN’s Poppy Harlow if that’s still the case, Dimon said it is.

“I think we can do a better job of lifting up all of our citizens….Free market capitalism, properly regulated, has lifted billions of people out of poverty,” Dimon said. “I’m usually led by my heart, but my brain part is saying if we’re going to spend money, we should spend it wisely.”

Dimon is warning his fellow Democrats that they are totally misreading the mood of the country, the political and economic risks the country faces, and in particular, the reason why average Americans support Donald Trump. It’s not because they are deplorable but because, well, Trump was actually right on a lot of stuff.

"I don't like how Trump said things, but he wasn't wrong about those critical issues. That's why they're voting for him. People should be more respectful of our fellow citizens," says @JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. "I think this negative talk about MAGA will hurt Biden's campaign." pic.twitter.com/WKnDjBvefO

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 17, 2024

More than that, average Americans keep getting the message that the Democrats hate them, and it turns out that directing scorn at voters is not a great way to woo them into voting for you.

I haven’t a strong affinity for or even much of an opinion about Dimon–I haven’t spent enough time thinking about him in recent years to say anything substantive about him.

But clearly, Dimon is right about this; significantly, he is now willing to say it out loud. As one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful moneymen, he wields a lot of influence in a way that a hedge fund manager or independent businessman like Musk, Bezos, or (in the old days) Trump wouldn’t.

JPMorgan is about as deeply entrenched in the fabric of the Establishment as you can get, and Dimon is creating an open lane for others in the Establishment to break with Biden and normalize Trump.

It may just reflect Dimon’s intelligence–Trump treats people well when they treat him well. But it may also be something deeper–a sense that the Democrats have gone too far left, and he is signaling to his fellow CEOs that they must recalibrate their political leanings or face consequences from the American people.

Who knows what Dimon is thinking? What is clear is that his openly saying that Trump and his voters have a point will make a lot of waves with the CEOs at the Davos meeting and may force some of them to rethink their political approach for the coming election.

Businessmen have suffered a lot of shocks in the past couple of years, and the Davos crowd is being forced to retrench a bit due to the massive backlash of people who hate their agenda.

Dimon, at least, has noticed.