Here we go again.
President Barack Obama is preparing new overtures to business that may start with a walk into the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a retreat with corporate chief executive officers, according to people familiar with his plans.
The Obama administration has been at odds with the Chamber, which fought Obama’s health-care and financial regulatory overhauls and committed $75 million to political ads in the midterm congressional elections, mainly directed against Democrats. The CEO summit would be a way to address complaints from some executives the Democratic administration is anti- business.
The Chamber will spend double that amount in 2012 trying to defeat Obama, because it cares little about business, and everything about pushing a radical corporatist agenda that benefits the biggest, most elite corporations. Because if they really cared about business, they'd be championing his presidency. I've quoted this several times because it's instructive:
Investors around the world say President Barack Obama is bad for the bottom line, even though U.S. corporations are on track for the biggest earnings growth in 22 years and the stock market is headed for its best back-to- back annual gains since 2004.
Big business couldn't be better, despite economic armageddon.
As I wrote Thursday:
[Voters] think there is no difference between the parties when it comes to the rich and powerful. And why should they? Obama's finance team is essentially a branch office of Goldman Sachs and company. Treasury was more concerned with using HAMP as a way to protect the banks than help struggling homeowners stay in their homes. In a bizarre role reversal -- the White House economic team tried to water down the finance reform bill that came out of Congress.
It's not hard to see why people have gotten the sense that Democrats aren't much better on Wall Street matters than Republicans (even if they are).
The result is this:
Obama has a choice -- cozy up to the Chamber and Wall Street and continue to lose the populist vote (and likely reelection), or he can side with an American electorate furious at the abuses from our nation's corporate and financial elite. It's clear the options are mutually exclusive. Only one of these helps win a second term.