Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump? The Winner Is…the Oligarchy
3rd May 2016
This presidential election may have been driven by populist fever in both parties, but at the end, the campaign has left the nation’s oligarchs in better position than ever. As Bernie Sanders now marches to his own inevitable defeat, leaving the real winners those oligarchs—notably in tech, media, urban real estate and on Wall Street—who are among Hillary Clinton’s most reliable supporters.
With either Ted Cruz, or , more likely, Donald Trump, as the GOP nominee, the emerging post-industrial ruling class will have little to no reason to even consider breaking with the Democrats. It’s already clear that companies such as Facebook consider it their duty to stop Trump, and there is a growing tendency among social media firms, including Twitter, to censor unpopular right-wing views.
Clinton, by outlasting Sanders, has done the oligarchs’ dirty work for them. As Greg Ferenstein, who has been surveying Internet billionaires in the Bay Area notes, the tech elite—much like media and Wall Street—have no sympathy for Sanders’s social democracy. After all, it’s much harder to become a mega-billionaire if tax rates for the wealthy soar; much better to show your commitment to things like gender equality, gay rights, climate change from the comfort of San Francisco or Manhattan luxury apartments or soaking in the hot tub in Malibu, Boulder, the Hamptons, or Los Altos hills.