The alchemy of big law was always the way in which you seamlessly revolve in and out of government - the allure of making a lot of money and governing.

That is what is shattering.

Relatedly, for the first time in my lifetime, Democratic voters are turning against their own leaders.

40% of Democratic voters approve of Congressional Democrats, and 49% disapprove.

Last year, 75% approved and just 21% disapproved.

At town halls, Democratic members of Congress are encountering not support, but rage.

As Axios reported, a “senior House Democrat told Axios that a colleague called them after a town hall crying and said: "They hate us. They hate us.”’

Democratic voters haven’t fingered biglaw as the culprit, so the question right now is whether corporate America and big law will remain homeless,
or whether firms like Paul Weiss can recapture what they had.

But there is deep rage in the Democratic base, and on the right, at oligarchy.

And there’s another group ascending against the anti-populists who run Democratic politics.

On Friday, there were 34,000 people in Denver, Colorado at a Bernie Sanders rally.

For context, that’s 5% of the population of Denver, and 1% of the population of the Denver metro area.

One of the speakers was FTC Commissioner #Alvaro #Bedoya, who Trump had tried to remove last week.

Bedoya and his colleague, #Rebecca #Kelly #Slaughter, had been in the shadow of former Chair Lina Khan, but were important officials in moving populist policy.

In contrast to Paul Weiss, instead of lying down, they chose to fight.

Both are doing media tours to discuss the work they are doing against oligarchy.

Bedoya went to Colorado and spoke before that giant crowd. When was the last time a commissioner of a small Federal antitrust agency did that?

Sanders, who is attracting a lot of people who did not support him in 2016 and 2020 to his rallies, is building a different kind of politics.

He has refined his argument to focus on oligarchy, the group of superrich who are running the United States.

And a newer generation of politicians are recognizing in that argument something that makes sense.

There are conflicting messages, notably the New York Times’ Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson launching a campaign around the concept of Abundance, which I’ll touch on soon.
But the possibility of sharpening policy tools to bring our oligarchs back into our democracy and match them with a political coalition is there.

And in that sense, I am thankful to Paul Weiss and Brad Karp.
-- In this dangerous moment, the Democratic corporate establishment, by capitulating so obviously to Trump in return for corporate money, has just ripped out the heart that ran the Clinton, Obama, and much of the toxic parts of the Biden administrations.

And they did so at the only moment in the last two decades during which normal Democrats are looking for someone to blame for their own party’s fecklessness.

And who better to blame than the would-be Kamala Harris staff, a pack of Google and private equity defense lawyers - and Chuck Schumer’s brother - who, when the chips were down, bent the knee to Trump?

-- Matt Stoller

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-democrats-corporate