Hillary Clinton will probably win, and elite Republicans are actually fine with that

If you listen to Donald Trump and the apocalyptic warnings of talk radio personalities, the election of Hillary Clinton means the end of civilization as we know it.  If you look at PredictWise, Clinton currently has around an 81% chance of winning, after having rebounded from that rocky period of pneumonia etc.  Remember, though, that there are a lot of different types of Republicans.  There are social conservatives, who are concerned primarily with issues like abortion.  There are those who care primarily about reducing redistribution through the federal budget.  And then there are those I call the Chamber of Commerce types.  The ones who basically want stability so that business can proceed apace.  Most will vote for Donald Trump because, in the ballot booth, party loyalty "trumps" just about everything else.  Yet, if the election of Hillary Clinton were as terrifying as Trump claims, it would be time to batten down the hatches.  Here's the S&P 500 year to date.



That ain't battenin' down those hatches.  Is this because Clinton will spark the next phase of an historic bull market?  Nope.  This bull market has already gone on for a rather long period of time, largely because we had a terrifying drop in the financial crisis.  Rather, markets and the economy as a whole are only weakly influenced at best by the president, under normal times.  The dirty secret here is as follows:

Read the commentariat among the business class and they will whine about how the Fed is keeping interest rates too low.  Then, the markets freak the fuck out every time it looks like the Fed might raise interest rates.  They rally, then, on news that the Fed won't raise rates.  Markets maintain stability as Clinton's lead solidifies while Trump promises to throw out Yellen in favor of someone who will jack up interest rates, doing exactly what investors claim to want, but which causes them to freak out as soon as they worry that it might actually happen.  There is more to it, of course, including a general worry about Trump's unpredictability, but that's kind of the point.

So, Clinton is ahead.  And, the markets are fine with that.  Republican investors are fine with that.  Would that be the case if Republicans had nominated Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or someone else less Trump-y?  Uh...  Good question.  After all, talk of raising rates is now Republican standard.  Would they really push for it where they in charge, or is it kind of like talk of deficit reduction when the president is a Democrat?  Uh...

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