Once a reliable cash source for the president, Wall Street has all but abandoned Obama in his reelection campaign. And he isn’t the only Democrat to lose their goodwill.

A rough analysis of this cycle's political donations shows that banks gave Democrats about half as much as in 2008. Four years ago, seven of the twenty companies whose employees gave the most to the Democratic National Committee came from the financial-services industry, for a total of about $2.9 million, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. This year, the same was true of just four of the top twenty companies, with the employees donating less than $1.5 million to the DNC. In 2008, finance employees in the top twenty gave the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee $1.6 million. This year, just $500,000.

The reasons for their abandonment of the Democratic party—which usually receives about as much from the industry as Republicans do—have been made plain. For one, the banks are not at all pleased to have borne the blame for the Great Recession. “They’re super successful in their own little ecosystems,” a former Democratic fundraiser said. “When they get called out, even if they brought it on themselves, it’s as if their boss came into their office for the first time in 10 years to say, you’re doing a bad job.” What’s more, the banking crisis’s chief legislative response, Dodd-Frank, eats into their profits. But what if those gobs of cash they redirected to the GOP, as retaliation, fail to vault Romney to the White House and Republicans to the Senate majority? How will Wall Street make amends with the party they just spent millions of dollars attempting to boot from power?

The budding consensus is that the banks will re-open their checkbooks. Democrats, if they retain the Senate and White House, would the cards in ongoing discussions about how to regulate Wall Street and rebuild the economy. As the former fundraiser points out, the historical caution of Wall Street—hefty donations to both sides, and fifty years of fruitful relationships with Democratic fundraisers and lawmakers—almost demands a return of equilibrium. Of course, how soon peacemaking will happen, and how publicly, given the notable number of Wall Streeters who have been outspoken about their displeasure with Obama, remains to be seen. But even Paul Begala, a fundraiser for the Obama-aligned super PAC Priorities USA Action—and thus, a man who has spent the better part of the year being told by the finance industry to shove off—anticipates some form of reconciliation. “Both the business community and the President need each other,” he wrote in an email.

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