Obama alienates the successful

National Journal:

In physics, every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. President Obama could learn a lesson from Sir Isaac Newton and understand that while his policies promoting fairness may poll well in a vacuum, they could strike at the heart of the upscale, well-educated group of supporters who fueled his victory four years ago.

It’s easy to forget, now that Obama is preaching a populist message on the campaign trail, that a major part of his support came from the very 1 percent that he’s now calling on to pay their fair share in taxes. Obama carried the super-wealthy—those making $200,000 or more a year—with 52 percent of the vote, 17 points more than John Kerry won in 2004. But now surveys show Obama losing significant ground with affluent voters, trailing Romney 49 percent to 43 percent among those making $100,000 or more in the latest Quinnipiac poll—his worst showing among any economic demographic.

The struggles have extended to the fundraising front, where visions of an Obama juggernaut have fallen far short of expectations, thanks to weaker-than-expected donations from Wall Street donors and bundlers, whose enthusiasm toward the president has cooled over the last four years. The populist rhetoric, along with the Dodd-Frank legislation cracking down on the financial industry, are major factors why the Obama campaign is behind its 2008 fundraising pace.

Take a look at Washington Capitals vice-chairman Raul Fernandez, who donated $30,000 to the president’s campaign in 2008, for a sign of how things have changed. The former Obama backer toldThe Washington Post that he would be voting for “anybody but Obama” and suggested the president’s fairness rhetoric smacked of anti-Americanism. “They paint it with one big brush,” Fernandez told the paper. “They are truly trying to make it evil.”

At a time of economic turmoil, one might not be predisposed to shed a tear for a multimillionaire sports team owner, but his sentiments are shared by a large chunk of the upper class that make up a key constituency in several crucial battleground states. Take Virginia, with its Democratic-leaning, wealthy entrepreneurial class in the D.C. suburbs. Over one-third of Virginia voters make more than $100,000 a year, and 7 percent make more than $200,000 a year. That’s not a trivial demographic; the state’s wealthiest voters make up a larger share than its Latino voters.

Meanwhile in Colorado, the $200,000-and-over demographic made up 8 percent of the electorate in 2008, and Obama comfortably carried this group by a double-digit margin. That was a huge swing from 2004, when George W. Bush carried that same demographic, getting a whopping 66 percent of the vote. With only Kerry’s level of support from the “top 1 percent,” Obama probably would lose Colorado.

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Obama's hostility toward the successful is self defeating.  These people are already paying a disproportionate amount of our income taxes.   The US has the most "progressive" income tax rates in the world and Obama wants to add to the burden shouldered already by the rich.  This will such money out of the economy that would have gone to people who provide goods and services to these people.  I don't blame them for rejecting the Obama politics of envy.