The growing opposition towards Hillary Clinton’s ascension has one thing right: Democrats should not be seen as the second party of Wall Street. Obama’s recovery and Fed policy have, as Democrats like Elizabeth Warren like to point out, often favored the financial oligarchs , although their support for Democrats makes them far less keen on taking on the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists , who have also profited under Obama. High valuations—even absurd ones—enrich the insiders who found companies, underwriters, and merger mavens, but those valuations have done precious little for the vast majority of Americans.
Faced with the loss of middle class voters, the administration seems determined to double down on its current coalition. So to whom do they turn to determine their future political direction? Not to a successful elected official from a swing district or a Main Street businessperson but to Google’s Eric Schmidt, an oligopolist of the first order from the party’s new heartland around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Given their cozy ties to Wall Street and oligarchs like Schmidt, the Democrats have failed to push class warfare as an issue, preferring instead to play the racial trump card. They allow issues to be dominated by such flawed emissaries as the detestable Al Sharpton, whose job seems to be the stoking of African-American ire. Similarly, the president’s executive order on undocumented residents follows this approach, by trying to appeal to Latino racial interests.
Yet race politics has limited appeal to whites, and ultimately may not guarantee keeping many minority voters in check.
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