Well, yes. It's no big surprise that Mitt Romney has friends in high places. He's an east coast Republican way up there in the tax brackets. The wealthy on Wall Street can relate to him more than the rest of the ragtag bunch gearing up for the GOP's presidential nomination. So it's not alarming that he's secured more donations from Wall Street than Obama so far. 

The presidential race, at this point, is primarily a cash race. I've gotten the requisite emails from the Obama campaign wherein I'm addressed as "friend" and made to feel important before I'm asked for a donation of any size. You need money to get your message out, to hire people like Shepard Fairey to draw up iconic pop art posters of you. And Obama may have burned what few bridges he had between himself and the Wall Street folks.

The Occupy Wall Street movement doesn't associate itself with the Democratic party--in fact, they're pretty adamantly party-less, feeling as though they've been betrayed by both sides. The Republicans never had any progressive intentions, but the Democrats run on promises of progress and then fail to fulfill them. People aren't sure which is worse anymore. Still, the right views the protestors as agents of the left, as card-carrying Democrats, as bottom-feeders out to deprive real America of its proper workings. Obama hasn't been explicitly supportive of the protests, but he has been sympathetic. He understands what would lead someone to march on New York's financial district. He hasn't condemned it.

That might be enough to sever a few ties to the 1%. And Romney, as a reasonable Republican, as an agent of the wealthy, is there to pick up those ties. Maybe he would have secured those donations anyway. Maybe it's not the protests that slid the money to the other side--maybe it was there all along. But we are seeing the start of what might be the best-funded presidential campaign out of all of them.

Not that a well-funded opponent has stopped Obama in the past. After all, McCain had plenty of dollars to back his name--Obama just used his funds better. It's certainly possible to lose the dollar war and win the election, but Obama no longer has the contrast advantage. He's no longer coming off of two terrible Republican terms. He can't propose change to his own agenda. And while he'll certainly gather plenty of votes as the lesser of two evils from progressives, plenty of people have put their trust back in the guardians of money.