After spending the last six months trying desperately to appease the extremist wing of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton is now in the market for donors who will help her win the general election. And according to several recent stories, she isn’t limiting her search to the usual suspects.
From Politico:
Hillary Clinton’s supporters in recent days have been making a furious round of calls to top Bush family donors to try to convince them that she represents their values better than Donald Trump.
Politico is careful to build the story around Clinton’s “supporters,” but we can safely assume that these calls are being made in accordance with Hillary’s wishes. She knows that there are major GOP donors who want nothing to do with Trump, but she also knows that she could be inviting a backlash from the Bernie Sanders faction of the party. Sanders has been hitting Clinton as a Wall Street puppet for months, and a story like this will only cement the widespread feeling that she cares much less about a progressive agenda than she does about becoming president.
So sure, her “supporters” are making the calls. The question is, are they working?
Politico couldn’t find any Bush donors who would admit giving financial support to Clinton, but the New York Observer reported that Renaissance Technologies – a hedge fund that donated millions to the Ted Cruz campaign – was now funneling political donations to Hillary. The report also noted that, whether her outreach efforts are successful or not, Clinton already has a network of donors in common with Jeb Bush. In other words, the establishment wants what the establishment wants. For many, the ideological differences hardly matter.
For Trump, this sets up a situation that will essentially be the Republican primaries all over again, except this time the stakes will be much higher. While Trump has already said he will accept donations in order to beat Clinton’s massive war machine, it remains to be seen how much he can raise. Some financial bigwigs are concerned about his proposals, including a promise to renegotiate America’s free trade agreements. They may find Clinton’s predictability more attractive than Trump’s sometimes-radical ideas.
On the other hand, Trump has proven to be one of the most skilled politicians in history when it comes to getting free press. He sailed to the Republican nomination on pocket change, soundly defeating candidates who outspent him by exorbitant amounts. Furthermore, if this race shapes up to be The Elitists of America v. Donald Trump, we could see a dramatic shift in public opinion. If there’s one thing liberals and conservatives agree on, it’s that Washington no longer focuses on the interests of the American people.
As unlikely as it may sound now, Trump – controversial, widely-hated, and relentlessly un-PC – could be the man who brings this country together.
Well, for a month or two.
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