Reply #7: Business and banking

[Recursion]

primaries were not important back in 1896

True; I said "primaries" because to modern ears that's the nomination process, and if I had said "at the convention" it would have sounded like Bryant hadn't been laying groundwork for that for a year previous.

The "bourbon" democrats or rather the dems who favored Cleveland's conservative policies nominated a ticket led by a former governor of Illinois, John Palmer.

The Bourbon Democrats favored business. The Republicans favored banking and finance. Those two were not considered the same thing like they are now -- even Morgan wanted US Steel so he would be a 'real' businessman. Anyways, the way this interests me regarding today is the way that the Republican party (at least parts of it) represent "old" (pre-NAFTA) business and the DLC part of our party represents "new" (post-NAFTA) business while labor is getting kicked in the teeth by both. (As I attempt to argue in another thread, Shrub is actually a defector in this sense and is a "new business" guy just like the DLC are, much to the chagrin of many Republicans.)