Biden, progressives and their financial supporters, explained

Joe and Hunter arrive in China, 2013

Joel Kotkin: China and the Oligarchs

Tech elites and their Wall Street allies, as opposed to more populist candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, ruled Democratic primaries. Whereas Sanders and (to a lesser extent) Warren ran legitimately grassroots-backed campaigns, they could not withstand the money, influence, and media power of the oligarchies. In the presidential race Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the backing of Wall Street, tech, and Hollywood moguls, including bundlers who allowed them to raise unprecedented money. Among financial firms, communications companies and lawyers, Biden outraised Trump by five to one or more.

All these interests had one main priority: to remove the disruptive, irascible, and unpredictable Donald Trump. If spending tens of millions wired from the coasts to may not create a Democratic Senate, the executive alone can deliver on the critical aspects of the oligarchic agenda: friendly ties to China, the suspension of antitrust action, a full-bore assault on the tangible economy, and executive action that damages the great American heartland in favor of the dense, high-cost coastal areas. Consider this agenda’s winners and losers one by one.

China: The Big Winner

Trump’s willingness to stand up to China’s economic, political, and media threats constituted his signature departure from the corporate elite—notably in tech, where the oligarchs remain generally friendly to China. Beijing can count on friends from Never Trumping free traders to high fliers in Hollywood, the legacy media, and Silicon Valley, all of whom have censored critical coverage of China’s handling of the pandemic, and most of whom are allied to the amoralists on Wall Street.

The corporate members of the Biden coalition generally see China as a source of customers and capital, not a threat to American industries. The new Democratic gentry, epitomized by former New York Mayor and super-mogul Michael Bloomberg, even express open admiration for the Communist regime. Not surprisingly Vice President Biden, whose own family had had close business ties with Beijing, has minimized the Chinese threat to our economy, claiming incredibly last year that “you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”

As the Biden family saga reveals, the most enduring reason for embracing China is, of course, money. Since 1990 the U.S. deficit in trade goods with China has ballooned from under $10 billion annually to over $345 billion last year. China’s ratio of imports to exports was four to one in 2018. This has enriched many of our leading manufacturing companies—notably Apple—while costing an estimated 3.4 million job losses in the U.S. since its inclusion in the World Trade Organization in 2001.

China trade has benefited consumers of course, at least for the short run. But it has also emboldened the army of lobbyists and political forces paid to hustle for “open trade” with the crony Communist regime. Numerous prominent figures from both parties, including former GOP Speaker John Boehner as well as former China ambassador and Democratic Senator Max Baucus, have signed up to defend China’s interests; we can imagine they will be fine with allowing China to go ahead and conquer Taiwan. Like Stalin’s liberal apologists in the 1930s, some progressives, including the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart, even deny that China’s economy engages in “cheating,” particularly through the theft of technology.

Glenn Reynolds, who linked to this article, comments that “our political class is easily bought”. I’ve seen reference to the “political class” for years and finally looked it up. Wikipedia offers a succinct definition:

Political class, or political elite is a concept in comparative political science originally developed by Italian political theorist Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941). It refers to the relatively small group of activists that is highly aware and active in politics, and from whom the national leadership is largely drawn. As  Max Weber noted, they not only live "for politics"—like the old notables used to—but make their careers "off politics" as policy specialists and experts on specific fields of public administration.[1] Mosca approached the study of the political class by examining the mechanisms of reproduction and renewal of the ruling class; the characteristics of politicians; and the different forms of organisation developed in their wielding of power. 

Elected legislatures may become dominated by subject-matter specialists, aided by permanent staffs, who become a political class.[2]