Capital weighing in

Ever since the misbegotten 2016 presidential election, I've been haunted by what the graphic above shows. Somehow Donald Trump was able to win despite the fact that Hillary Clinton won the counties which provide 64 percent of the nation's GDP -- a rough measure of economic strength.

The 2020 election pattern was similar: Joe Biden won a few more counties -- counties which provide 66 percent of GDP. Democrats win where the country's wealth comes from. GOPers win all those expanses of land in economically hurting places. Only the Electoral College makes it close.

Now I'm a good loosely left-ish progressive, so I tend to expect that corporate capital gets what it wants, most of the time. I'm not happy about that, but I observe its truth. So I find the electoral pattern a little puzzling. Would capital long be content to be ruled by a party to hails from places that are failing?

Turns out, of course, the GOPers offer lots of goodies to corporate capital, in particular weak regulation and low taxes. And corporations usually donate to both parties, making sure they keep a foot in both camps.

But capital that's winning is far more forward looking than most individual politicians. It has to be, to avoid being a casualty of capitalism's unceasing waves of creative destruction. And hanging in with the parts of the country that are failing economically is backward looking.

There are all sorts of specific circumstances that stand out in the current tiff between Mitch McConnell and such behemoths as Coke and Delta Airlines and Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Major League Baseball. Georgia's voter suppression law is thoroughly rancid and the proposed Texas voting restrictions might turn out to be even worse.

But behind it all, is the reality that business is going to go where the profits are. And that's where the money and the people are. 

There are wedge opportunities for Democrats here. At the very least, we ought to be able to show that it might profit capital to make something like 64 percent of its investment in politicians on the forward looking side. That's both where the votes and the economic opportunity are located. The squishy, but widespread, corporate recoil from outright destruction of democratic rights is a good omen. Corporate capital is showing which way it thinks the wind is blowing.