This story is news with liberal commentary.
“A staggering 77% of business leaders polled by Yale say they plan to vote for Joe Biden over Trump in the November election … despite Biden’s proposals to hike tax rates on both corporations and the high-income households,” CNN reported on Tuesday, September 29, 2020, on the eve of the first presidential debate.
“‘Their jobs are easier if they don’t have a divided nation, workforce and customers,’ Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at Yale, told CNN Business. Although CEOs are ‘afraid to speak out’ publicly against Trump, Sonnenfeld said they will do so privately and collectively. The Yale summit featured dozens of leading executives, including the heads of General Motors, IBM, Caterpillar, Harley-Davidson, Johnson & Johnson and Goodyear. …
“CEOs are not just upset the Trump administration didn’t do more to limit the pandemic. They fear the government made it worse.
Eighty-four percent of business leaders surveyed by Yale say the Trump administration’s response to the crisis has hurt, not helped, their businesses. And 86% said that the 200,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States could have been ‘far less’ with a more vigorous government response. …
“On trade, 62% of executives said their businesses suffered from unfair trade practices in China. Yet a greater percentage — 78% — say the Trump administration’s policies made US-China relations worse. …
“Skepticism about Trump is also evident in campaign donations. Wall Street has sent nearly five times more cash to Biden than to Trump, according to OpenSecrets. Trump is losing the fundraising race among Wall Streeters by a greater magnitude than he did in 2016 and than Senator John McCain did in 2008. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney, a former private equity executive, tripled President Obama’s fundraising haul from the industry.”
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Comment: CEOs are trained to act in the best interests of their companies and shareholder owners. They’re also highly intelligent and very well-informed business people. This survey is further evidence that people who think are against Trump remaining in office, and his base of supporters is shrinking. Today, it isn’t much more than a motley collection of white supremacists, religious cultists, conspiracy theorists, people with grievances, and others who don’t think rationally — plus cynical Republican leaders who know better, but exploit Trumpism for their own ends, primarily the accumulation and retention of political power, but they should be thought of as a distinct group that will abandon Trump when he’s no longer useful to them. This is still a free country (at least for now), and people can vote for whoever they want (but Republicans are making enormous efforts to keep their votes from being counted), but some votes are better for the country than others, and if you vote for Trump, you didn’t cast a “better” vote. Call that my personal opinion if you like, but it has the backing of 77% of America’s CEOs, a group not known for being liberal Democrats.