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Wednesday, December 06, 2023

Truthout reports on Nikki Haley. If Trump picks her for second spot, what you gonna get? Good or ugly?

 With Crabgrass attitude being what it is, readers can guess the post answering, good or ugly. The detail is interesting in how such a conclusion unfolds. Truthout, Dec. 6 -

Eagerness to Cut Social Security and Medicare Wins Haley Wealthy Donors - Coming out strong on this issue tells the billionaires everything they need to know about who Nikki Haley really serves.

[...] It’s not just the Koch network that garnered huge headlines when it was announced that its Americans for Prosperity Action fund was endorsing her for president after laying out of presidential politics for some time. Haley attended a fundraiser in New York with top Wall Street financiers on Monday and raised a whopping $500,000 in one fell swoop.

CNBC reported that the event was held at the “luxurious Upper West Side penthouse of former Facebook executive Campbell Brown and her husband Dan Senor, chief public affairs officer at hedge fund Elliot Investment Management” which was founded by GOP megadonor Paul Singer. (According to Theodore Schliefer of Puck News, everyone was slightly disappointed that Singer himself was not in attendance because everyone on Wall St. is waiting on tenterhooks to see who he has decided to back.) But, among those who were there were:

Cliff Asness, a co-founder of investment firm AQR Capital Management, Kristin Lemkau, CEO of JPMorgan Chase’s wealth management division, Robert Rosenkranz, head of Delphi Capital Management and Ray Chambers, a philanthropist who once had a stake in the NHL’s New Jersey Devils were all spotted.

CNBC notes that Lemkau showed up just days after her boss, Jamie Dimon, exhorted people to back Haley at a conference hosted by The New York Times’ DealBook franchise. Dimon put it like this:

“Even if you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley, too. Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than [Donald] Trump,”

There is at least one liberal Democrat who stepped up early to help Haley in order to stop Donald Trump: Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who has funded several causes in opposition to Trump. But he’s a rarity. Liberal donors would generally rather spend their money on Democrats than Republicans.

The question is why in the world are these rich Republican donors suddenly backing Haley so strongly when they are very unlikely to get much of anything out of it? As Pucks‘ Schleifer observed:

[P]lenty of the people donating six or seven figures to Haley or DeSantis at this point don’t reasonably expect their candidate to win, a phenomenon I’ve never experienced before. The dominant feeling among major donors is a sense of apathy — that this is Trump’s race to lose, to say the least.

What is she doing that has them so enthralled that they are throwing away their money on her doomed campaign? The easy answer is that these people all have too much money, so these millions are just pocket change to them anyway and can take a flyer. If there’s ever been a better reason to raise their taxes to better fund the government, I’ve never seen it. And that may hold the real answer to the question of why they are now looking at Nikki Haley.

As you’ll recall, in the last debate Haley broke dramatically with Donald Trump by declaring that “any candidate that tells you they’re not going to go after Social Security and Medicare is not being serious.” She didn’t sugar coat it with the usual euphemisms like “we need to reform entitlements” and she’s made it clear that she not only wants to raise the retirement age, she also wants to reduce benefits for current beneficiaries by changing the cost of living formula. None of that is new for the pre-Trump GOP, but it’s been off the table since he took office.

In fact, one of Joe Biden’s finest hours was when he goaded the congressional Republicans into insisting they had no intention of threatening the programs:

Joe Biden and the Democrats have made it clear that if they get the majority they plan to raise the caps on Social Security and Medicare taxes to shore up the program. Rich Republicans are adamantly opposed to that and will do anything to prevent it. Throwing away money on Nikki Haley is one thing. Paying to keep old people from having to eat cat food is a bridge too far.

As CNN reported, the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity Action made it clear in their endorsement why they are backing Haley:

Emily Seidel – a top official in the influential political network associated with billionaire Charles Koch – praised the former UN ambassador’s “courage” for advocating changes to “an entitlement system that makes promises it can’t keep.”

And they aren’t the only ones:

“We need a complete reevaluation of entitlements,” Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot who is weighing backing Haley

In fact, I think we can assume that Haley’s eagerness to cut these programs is a primary motive behind the surge in big donor interest in her campaign. They may realize on some level that she is not going to win this time but they are signaling that this is the way to a billionaire’s heart. If you’re willing to force poor elderly people into even worse penury than they already are, you are their kind of gal. They’re investing in a future when Donald Trump is no longer telling his followers what they want to hear.

It will be interesting to see how Trump handles this. Although he’s vaguely indicated that he thinks cuts could be offset by growth for some reason, for the most part he’s held fast to his promise that the two vital programs cannot be cut and he’s kept the party with him. But as we can see, that’s a very tenuous promise. The real owners of the Republican Party are preparing to reassert themselves and this one little populist promise will die the day that Trump is finally out of politics. Haley is savvy enough to see that coming out strong on this issue tells the billionaires everything they need to know about who she really serves.

The item was authored by who founded the blog Hullabaloo.

Digby has been recognized for being careful in her claims, being well sourced,and her conclusions reasonably follow her presentation of facts. Yes, shw ia a progressive, but that alone is not discrediting of anything. Her ways and means are solid. 

Polls show that Republican support is strongest with the oldest voters, Dems stronger with the young. Why old farts might support one to pull the rug out from under their benefits is a question worth pondering. There are two elderly camps, the haves and the have-nots. Those who are haves do not rely upon programs the others need. Then, for a reason mysterious to most observers, the propaganda seems to move have-not elderly people against their own best interests. 

Crabgrass theorizes, susceptibility to being misled is strongest among those who've had a long life of steady MSM propaganda feeding - stronger over a lifetime -  than those younger and more skeptical of what they see from MSM while having their own favorites among web commentators, and that is a situation which might at least in part explain things. 

MSM is owned and serves moneyed interests, so go figure from there to Haley and her future - who would consistently file reports of her as other than thirty polling points or more behind Trump, dead on arrival with no chance to win today. 

Figure that and figure why. Digby tells you, but ponder anyway on how it all unfolds.

Those who have the long term perspective to promote death dealing blows to Social Security and Medicare are those not having any need to rely on either, long term.

Financiers host and donate to the Haley's dead on arrival for today perspective. As Digby notes, tomorrow belongs to them, or that is their mindset, long term. They are setting the table nicely for you, with no food to come except for them.

Beyond those simple observations, work out who you are and how you should react if not driven solely by your wealth, but also by a sense of human dignity and such. Figure who you should be when divide and conquer gets fed to you ad nauseam. Figure whether a cohesive society is better for all of us; better than what's best for a privileged few. Figure why politicians get bought and how in the world a Supreme Court of a generally prosperous nation could hand you Citizens United without expecting to be lynched by a watchful majority.