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Why Democrats Need to Be Careful About Dismissing Billionaires (and Their Money)
Watching last night’s Democratic debate, I was struck by how often the issue of billionaire donations came up. Of course, I’m not at all surprised by this development. The issue of who takes donations from billionaires — and in what circumstances — has become something of a litmus test in this campaign. After all, who can forget the infamous “wine cave” fiasco, in which Elizabeth Warren took Mayor Pete quite thoroughly to task for his willingness to cozy up to big-time donors. A similar discussion took place on the debate stage Friday night, and once again it was Mayor Pete who was taking the most fire.
To some degree, this is shrewd strategy on both Warren’s and Sanders’ part. They know that there’s a great deal of populist anger on the left (and on the right), and they hope to be able to leverage that to win the nomination. However, in so steadfastly and vigorously eschewing the contributions of the donor class, they might be painting themselves into a corner, one that might doom their candidacies should they become the party’s eventual nominee.
As Nancy MacLean documents in exhaustive and depressing detail in her book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, we ignore the right’s financial power at our own peril. Throughout the last…
