This is much more than a baseball fight.
For the sake of political symbolism, the decision to kick off the Atlanta All-Star Game is a shot that draws attention in cultural wars. After all, the Major League Baseball acted a day after President Biden told ESPN that he would support such a protest against Georgia’s new voting law, and Donald Trump immediately called for a boycott of baseball.
But there is a much deeper dynamic at play here: large parts of corporate America are increasingly at odds with the Republican Party.
For decades, the two have been practically synonymous. The biggest American companies were happy to open their coffers to Republican candidates who supported tax cuts, less government spending and reduced regulation.
Country Republicans were practically in charge – which is good for General Motors and everything in between – and that was symbolized by John Boehner when he was the mayor. In his new memoirs, Boehner admits that his power was waning when he failed to convince freshmen to compromise:
“Ronald Reagan used to say something in the sense that if I get 80 or 90 percent of what I want, it’s a victory. These guys wanted 100 percent every time. In fact, I don’t think that would satisfy them, because they really don’t they wanted legislative victories. They wanted wedge issues and conspiracies and crusades. “
But as the party moved under Trump’s command, Democrats moved to the left – and the corporate world began to evolve. Some of the changes started earlier, when big companies decided that affirmative action and gay rights were good for business. The racial protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s death also changed his behavior. And especially as the big tech companies joined the mix, CEOs became more sensitive to demands for social justice.
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Georgia’s top employers, led by Delta and Coca-Cola, under pressure from civil rights activists, launched a public relations campaign against the voting law signed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp.
As the New York Times points out, “Taking a stand on voting rights legislation drives companies into party politics and pits them against Republicans who have been willing to raise taxes and enact onerous regulations on companies that oppose them politically. “
And they retaliated. George House voted to repeal a tax reduction on aviation fuel that benefited Delta after the airline’s stance on baseball, just as the legislature had eliminated a tax reduction in 2018 when Delta broke with the NRA after the Parkland school shooting.
I can’t say that I am shocked that local politicians punish private companies that do things they don’t like, but this is a particularly crude exercise of power.
Trump, in his statement, also urged his supporters to boycott Coca, Delta and a list of other companies that oppose similar proposals in other states. Marco Rubio supported the boycott, calling the airline and soft drink company “to wake up corporate hypocrites”. So it is clear that the rigid alliance between Republicans and their traditional commercial allies has ended.
Now, I can’t imagine that millions of conservatives are going to boycott all the companies on the list, or even baseball itself. But Trump did some damage to the NFL with his attacks on the anthem protests.
If Trump were still in the White House, that would be the main story by the hour. But how much media attention should be devoted to these statements by a former president? It certainly got more than Barack Obama supporting the MLB movement, given Trump’s huge influence in the Republican Party.
The change in the game will cost Atlanta about $ 100 million in tourism revenue, so this is not a mere blow to the hand.
At the same time, part of what Biden has said about voting restrictions in Georgia goes too far. After an initial wave of positive coverage, the Washington Post gave Biden four Pinocchios for claiming that the law requires all polling stations to close at 5 pm.
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More in-depth reports have found that while Georgia law improves some things, such as an extra Saturday for early voting, it makes postal voting more expensive by requiring identification.
Gone are the days when athletic competitions were an oasis of cultural combat. Sports and politics are now inextricably linked, no matter who the president is. And large corporations are more interesting in scoring points with the left than one could have imagined a decade ago.