Independent voters cry out for a corporate crackdown. They get bipartisanship instead
Despite what billionaires and neoliberal pundits would have you believe, a corporate crackdown is overwhelmingly popular. Capitulating to the rich, corporate interests, and rightists in the name of bipartisan governance is not.
New polling from Blueprint Research, a Democratic-aligned public opinion research firm, has found that Harris’ pledge to have a Republican in her cabinet is not only ineffective, it’s actively counterproductive in her efforts to win over independent voters. Instead, Blueprint found that the single most effective message to independent voters is lambasting corporate greed (and the electorate generally).
This is not surprising to us; we’ve written about Blueprint’s previous research on this topic which found that lambasting corporate power is wildly popular despite Blueprint funder Reid Hoffman’s dislike of this messaging. But some pundits are still bewildered by this research. It turns out that independent voters are still upset about corporate greed despite all the unhinged opinion columns, poorly reasoned tweets and other consternation.
Last week our Executive Director, Jeff Hauser made the claim that Republicans are bad at governing and Biden would have been better off firing (or not renominating) the Trump holdovers within his legal power to remove or to replace. This claim set off more than a few neoliberal pundits who were eager to defend the inclusion of Republicans such as Jay Powell in a Democratic administration (a bipartisan standard Republicans are not held to). Now polling shows it’s not even politically expedient. Maybe these pundits should just admit they prefer Republican governance to that of Democrats.