Jamie Dimon Should Not Be A Democrat
He's only barely one now, but the Democrats can't be the party of the working class so long as Dimon maintains vestigial loyalty to it.
With Democrats like Jamie Dimon, who needs Republicans?
The trouble with the Democratic Party is that Jamie Dimon wants to maintain some vestigial association with it. Not enough, alas, to have prevented the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase last January from saying nice things about Donald Trump’s economic policies (reportedly prompting an unnamed White House aide to label Dimon “MAGA curious”). Dimon’s cozying up to Trump prompted a White House meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris that, I suspect was inconclusive. A better result would have been for Harris not to care. The Democratic Party won’t be where it needs to be to win working-class votes until people like Dimon want nothing to do with it.
My latest piece for The New Republic is about four Wall Street billionaires—Dimon, Nelson Peltz, Stephen Schwarzman, and Kenneth Griffin—who had the good sense to condemn Trump after January 6 (or, in Griffin’s case, after the 2022 midterms) but are now sucking up to the 45th president (who stands an excellent chance of being convicted of a felony before this week draws to a close). These CNBC talking heads all have hilariously implausible reasons for doing so. For Dimon and Griffin, it’s inflation (never mind that Trump wants to eliminate the Fed’s independence and slap an inflationary 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods). For Peltz, it’s immigration (never mind that Trump bullied congressional Republicans into scuttling their own immigration bill on the grounds that President Joe Biden intended to sign it into law). For Schwarzman, it’s anti-Semitism (which … I can’t even).
For some reason, all four feel the need to spout made-up civic-minded reasons for drifting into Trump’s corner when it’s clear they’re only doing it to preserve their 2017 tax cuts, which Biden intends to let expire for incomes above $400,000. As I argue in the piece, Trump doesn’t believe their bullshit and neither should you. You can read it here.
I think all parties should have big tents, but it's obvious you prefer exclusiveness, so maybe you can convince those biggies that we need to dramatically reduce income inequality in order for democracy to survive. Our sacred founding fathers suffered a much lower standard of living, far closer to the masses of genuine humanity, which many have argued provided the prospect that beyond the "free" land, the weather, insulating seas, submissive original residents, the promise of America was what spurred so much development here, not bizarre notions about taxation. The working class is perhaps the core that is needed, but we are a team if we wnt to succeed. Uncivil wars are dead ends.