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David Brooks is full of revelation today:
As in other recent campaigns, lawyers account for the biggest chunk of Democratic donations. They have donated about $18 million to Obama, compared with about $5 million to John McCain, according to data released on June 2 and available at OpenSecrets.org.
People who work at securities and investment companies have given Obama about $8 million, compared with $4.5 for McCain. People who work in communications and electronics have given Obama about $10 million, compared with $2 million for McCain. Professors and other people who work in education have given Obama roughly $7 million, compared with $700,000 for McCain.
Real estate professionals have given Obama $5 million, compared with $4 million for McCain. Medical professionals have given Obama $7 million, compared with $3 million for McCain. Commercial bankers have given Obama $1.6 million, compared with $1.2 million for McCain. Hedge fund and private equity managers have given Obama about $1.6 million, compared with $850,000 for McCain.
When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain.
Brooks’ main point here is that Obama and McCain are involved in some sort of Brooks Brothers culture war, with two large camps of elites warring with each other over who eventually gets to make policy, with Obama’s likely-in-charge camp preparing to rebel against the old-guard Republicans by selling out the Democratic agenda:
If the Democrats are elected, this highly educated class will have much more say over policy than during the campaign. Undecided voters sway campaigns, but in government, elites generally run things. Once the Republicans are vanquished, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that capital gains tax hike or serious measures to expand unionization.
Over the past few years, people from Goldman Sachs have assumed control over large parts of the federal government. Over the next few they might just take over the whole darn thing.
There’s only one problem with David Brooks’ argument, something that was nagging at me as I read it: the whole thing.
There’s a very simple reason that Obama has received so much more money from these sectors than John McCain. He’s received so much more money overall. Looking at the ratio, Obama’s received about 2.7 times as much money as John McCain, a disparity so large that you can only look at support by sector proportionally rather than directly - an equal disparity in absolute dollars should be expected were the candidates drawing equal support. Anything less is a tilt towards McCain, anything more is a tilt towards Obama. Otherwise, it just falls in the normal realm of Obama being much better at this than McCain is.
Going down the list:
- Lawyers: 3.6:1
- Securities and Investment: 1.8:1
- Communications: 5:1
- Educators: 10:1
- Real Estate: 1.5:1
- Medical Professionals: 2.3:1
- Commercial Bankers: 1.3:1
- Hedge Fund: 2:1
With an overall ratio of 2.7:1, Brooks’ thesis runs into a major problem: McCain is outperforming Obama, proportionally, in 5 of the 8 categories that make up Obama’s new ruling class. It’s not even that Brooks completely cherrypicked his data, it’s that he cherrypicked the wrong fucking data to make a point that can’t possibly stand. Even the presentation is designed to maximize the wrongness. Start with three groups that do disproportionately support Obama in order to mask the fact that none of the other groups do, and then stake out a thesis based on the initial impression rather than, perhaps, the actual information you’ve gathered.
From now on, my retirement plan isn’t saving or investing. It’s figuring out how to be insipid enough to land on the New York Times’ Op-Ed page without wandering out into traffic first.
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Jesse Taylor on 08:37 AM •
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The Dept. of Pundit Prognostication provides Bobo Brook’s response to Jesse’s definitive takedown:
<whiny voice>
“math is hard!”
</whiny voice>
Brooks must be taking lessons from Kristol—he used to be generally wrong in reasoning and interpretation, but didn’t usually have that Kristol-esque quality of “obviously and provably wrong on the basic facts.”
Doesn’t wingnut logic say that being dropped from a newspaper or TV show is censorship, so the First Amendment guarantees all of us a column in the New York Times, right?
One of the things I read being floated around is that McCain has more money overall when money from the RNC is included, because the RNC is way ahead of the DNC in fundraising.
If that’s true, where does all that RNC money come from? And why doesn’t it count in Mr. Brooks figures?…
Or does that detract from his thesis so it gets ignored?…
Only one question - who’s getting the oil company exec monies?
That’s not stupidity, that’s deceit. Brooks simply isn’t that dumb, ergo he is a lying propagandist.
And that’s okay with the NYT, which permits itself Krugman (who is allowed to tell the truth in service of the centre of the left) and Dowd, Brooks and Kristol (who are allowed to lie in service of the Right).
Don’t forget, kids! The NYT is a liberal newspaper!
What MikeEss and phylosopher said. Linked into “deceit” in my thread.
This is what he does. This is all he does.
Educators favor Obama to McCain 10:1?
I for one welcome our new Educator overlords.
Oh noes, and Goldman Sachs is a Jewish name too ... them Jew bankers ... and a Muslim named Hussein ... arrrgghhhh
Never mind that it isn’t exactly a bad thing that people from organizations with a strong future investment orientation are laying bets that Obama is their guy, is it? Technologic growth has more promise than continued subsidized resource extraction.
It’s really pretty stupid to compare overall contributions from one company or another, because there are plenty of folks working for The Man who haven’t drunk the corporate Koolade. And wage slaves at the places Brooks cites have even more reason than those at more moderate venues to be contributing to Obama.
that capital gains tax hike
I don’t know about the capital gains tax cut specifically, but most of Bush’s tax cuts are supposed to sunset automatically. There’s no way, with our fiscal crisis, that Obama and other Dems are going to go out of their way to extend those tax cuts or make them permanent.
And, yet again, I have to wonder, is this conservative trying to deceive people or is he merely stupid?
Hmm, investment bankers prefer Obama? Maybe they think it’s better we don’t turn into an overextend, debt ridden, undereducated faiing superpower?
Isn’t capital gains the one tax where it’s MOST likely that the Laugher Curve will follow the broken-clock-twice-a-day syndrome and raise revenue when reduced, and only because of coincidental portfolio adjustments?
Here are two points, one favoring your side and the other against:
if a company thinks Obama is more likely to win (and he is expected to) then they will give more money to him because they want to get in his good graces (that’s why most big companies give at least some to all major candidates);
to talk about this we need to know what non-special interest voters (whatever that is) give not total giving. Here’s an example: candidates A and B each get 50 from non-special interests, A gets 220 from special interests, B gets 50--in total A gets 2.7 times what B does. Since the non-special interest giving is 1-1, any special interest that gives more to A is favoring A. I doubt this is happening with Obama/McCain, but it does mean your argument could be wrong with the info given.
... so according to Brooks, if you’re worried about undue corporate influence in government, vote Republican?
... seriously?
“David Brooks is a liar and an idiot” is hardly a revelation, and his framing of this as an Obama-vs-McCain horse race is typical of how the NYT and the rest of the media like to present political news.
Intead, let’s just take some of the data from Brooks’ train-wreck of an op-ed—or from opensecrets directly—and think for a moment about the implications for an Obama presidency:
employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google
That’s a list of Obama’s base—the people who got him elected, and the people he’ll be working on behalf of. Personally, I’m not so concerned about Harvard, UC and Google, although they represent interests that only overlap slightly with my own. As for the rest… well, I think it’s safe to say that President Obama will be approving a lot more of the bank bailouts we’ve seen coming out of the Fed in the past year. Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor, right?
I’ve been saying it regularly since last winter, but it bears repeating: Obama is a company man, and he doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise. Make what excuses you want for him—even vote for him—but don’t think you’re getting any of the “change” you hoped for.
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The Dept. of Pundit Prognostication provides Bobo Brook’s response to Jesse’s definitive takedown:
<whiny voice>
“math is hard!”
</whiny voice>