All the President's Donors
After ignoring voters' concerns for years, Democratic elites, including the ultra-rich, are primed to crown the next party nominee. Even if you dislike Biden, that's not good for democracy.
Ever since Donald Trump ascended to the presidency in January 2017, the entire Democratic establishment has been warning about an existential threat the former reality TV host poses to democracy.
Buoyed by endless coverage of Russian interference in the election, Democratic leadership, from Nancy Pelosi to Chuck Schumer and the donor class made saving the republic their top issue. Jan. 6 reinforced their efforts.
With the re-emerging threat of Trump in 2024, anything and everything has been about saving democracy, comical from a political party that operated a charade of a primary to ensure an easy path for Joe Biden to receive the nomination.
Maybe they’re right, and this election is about what they say. Perhaps the better question for the elites is: democracy for whom?
Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June has renewed questions about his ability to run an effective campaign to defeat Trump and whether he’s up for the job of president at all. And the knives are out, including from within the donor class. The mainstream media has suddenly been awash with such stories. If you’re reading this you likely are aware of the maelstrom that has consumed Democrats since June 28. When the corporate media gets a taste of a seemingly good story (read: Russiagate), they’re not one to let go—and they’ll likely continue with that pursuit until the day Biden concedes to demands that he drop out of the race. It’s that simple. Democratic supporters outraged by the endless media coverage would be wise to reflect on the Trump era when concerns about Russian collusion riled up Americans and made struggling media companies rich.
As every Biden move, flinch or word jumble is put under a microscope, it’s important to remember that that is not the biggest story. There’s another question that deserves equally aggressive scrutiny. And it gets straight to the question of who democracy is for.
Bedwetters or Bloodsuckers?
For the better part of two years, US voters have been pretty clear about where they stood on the prospect of another Biden campaign: They demanded another option.
Not that they had a particular alternate candidate in mind. They simply looked at Biden, his age—a fair question despite accusations of widespread ageism—and his seemingly diminishing cognitive abilities, and tried to warn the Democratic establishment about impending political disaster.
Signs of disillusionment were everywhere. All Dems had to do was listen, albeit a difficult assignment for a political party widely seen as out of touch.
They need look no further than July 2022, 27 months before the presidential election. Two polls that month from popular liberal outlets, CNN and The New York Times, concluded that Democratic voters were eager for a new standard bearer.
"A new CNN poll finds 75% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters want the party to nominate someone other than President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, a sharp increase from earlier this year,” CNN reported.
A similar sentiment was recorded in the Times poll: 64 percent of surveyed Americans recommended the party nominate a different candidate for the 2024 election. And this wasn’t one of those polls heavily weighted by partisanship: 61 percent of Democrats said they felt that way, along with 73 percent of independents and “others.” The top reasons were age (33 percent) and job performance (32 percent) second. It’s fair to also assume that some voters believe both are linked. Only 29 percent of Democratic voters involved in that poll said Biden should be the nominee.
Why was that month so pivotal? It was a sign that his support had cratered from a year earlier. An NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll conducted in October 2021, a full nine months earlier, found that 44 percent of “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents” said someone else other than Biden would stand a better chance in 2024; 36 percent sided with the president.
In June 2022, before the aforementioned polls were released, The New York Times reported that “Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.” The exact same thing could be written today.
Despite Biden’s eroding support and emerging concerns about this ability to win in 2024, the paper noted that Democratic leaders weren’t interested in sounding the alarm publicly:
“Most top elected Democrats were reluctant to speak on the record about Mr. Biden’s future, and no one interviewed expressed any ill will toward Mr. Biden, to whom they are universally grateful for ousting Mr. Trump from office.”
Those who allowed themselves to be quoted on the record maintained—as his closest allies do now—that he's the "only Democrat" who could win the upcoming general election. The Biden alone can win analysis has always been bizarre, if not cultish. To truly believe it, you would have to entirely eliminate the possibility that the public had already scrutinized all alternatives—an unrealistic scenario without actually going through a real primary process. Secondly, you'd have to firmly come to grips that, as a Democrat, you've concluded your own party is bereft of political talent, a self-defeating strategy.
The establishment dug its heels despite voters’ concerns—and warnings. And this was before Biden’s unyielding support for Israel amid its genocide of Palestinians turned hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of voters against him, sparking a hastily organized “uncommitted” movement that will be sending at least 29 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August.
And for all the handwringing in recent days about voters already choosing Biden as their candidate, the Democratic primary was anything but. This report from ABC News in March 2023 basically sums it up:
“[L]eading Democrats tell ABC News they don't anticipate a traditional primary playing out between now and the nominating convention next year—with many aligned behind Biden's expected campaign for a second term, which is thought to be launching in the coming months.
The Democratic National Committee, the campaign arm of the party, has been committed for years to keeping Biden on Pennsylvania Avenue. When asked by Politico in August 2022 about how they might deal with a primary challenge, DNC executive director Sam Cornale put it bluntly: ‘We're with Biden. Period.’
The group also unanimously passed a resolution during their February winter meeting expressing their ‘full and complete support’ for a second term for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.”
The DNC already made its decision. Just as they did with Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016. And Biden (with the help of Obama) over Sanders again in 2020. The party was backing Biden. What voters were saying in interviews and polls was nothing but a distraction. Biden and no one else would have an opportunity to secure the nomination.
Rise of the Donor Class
One of the reasons the Democratic Party in recent years has been so successful in quashing serious dissent within its ranks is the donor class. The elites effectively get what they want, with a few exceptions. That’s in large part thanks to Citizens United, the US Supreme Court decision in 2010 that enabled the rise of unlimited political spending and dark money chicanery.
This piece from the Brennan Center for Justice, published in 2019, effectively lays out the consequences of the court’s 5-4 ruling in the context of recent Democratic Party warnings about the fate of democracy:
“While wealthy donors, corporations, and special interest groups have long had an outsized influence in elections, that sway has dramatically expanded since the Citizens United decision, with negative repercussions for American democracy and the fight against political corruption.”
“From 2010 to 2018, super PACs spent approximately $2.9 billion on federal elections,” the organization said. “Notably, the bulk of that money comes from just a few wealthy individual donors. In the 2018 election cycle, for example, the top 100 donors to super PACs contributed nearly 78 percent of all super PAC spending.”
The proportion of greater spending among the ultra-rich compared to the rest of us has been a consistent theme in elections since Citizens United: In 2016 top 100 super PAC donors contributed 72.94 of the money; in 2020 it was 68.74 percent; in 2022, 72.92 percent; and thus far in 2024, 73.05 percent. This year, the top 1 percent of donors are responsible for a staggering 96.47 percent of the money.
“In short, thanks to the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, a tiny sliver of Americans now wield more power than at any time since Watergate, while many of the rest seem to be disengaging from politics,” the Brennan Center wrote in 2015.
It added: “This is perhaps the most troubling result of Citizens United: in a time of historic wealth inequality, the decision has helped reinforce the growing sense that our democracy primarily serves the interests of the wealthy few, and that democratic participation for the vast majority of citizens is of relatively little value.”
An OpenSecrets analysis of campaign spending in the decade since Citizens United drew similar conclusions about the disproportionate spending among elites.
“Billionaire donors aren't new,” OpenSecrets wrote. “But they didn't have as many ways to directly influence elections before Citizens United.”
“Citizens United suddenly and dramatically increased the power of dark money groups—namely nonprofit groups that are not required to disclose their donors—to directly influence federal elections,” it added. “These secretive groups spent $963 million on elections over the last decade without informing voters who paid for their ads.”
When Occupy Wall Street protesters were flooding lower Manhattan chanting, “This is what democracy looks like” in the fall and winter of 2011, this wasn’t what they were referring to. People power gave life to the movement—and the people were not only calling for wholesale change but exposing the undemocratic nature of operating under an oligarchical system.
The system won.
As Biden is now finding out, the system can also taketh away.
Donor Revolt
On July 10, two days before Biden’s much-anticipated “Big Boy” press conference at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., Axios reported that Schumer, the Senate majority leader, “is privately signaling to donors that he's open to a Democratic presidential ticket that isn't led by” Biden.
“Over the last 12 days,” the report continued, “Schumer has been listening to donors' ideas and suggestions about the best way forward for the party, according to three people familiar with the matter.”
In the days after Biden’s fateful debate performance, reports surfaced about anxiety gripping the Democratic donor world. According to the Times, dozens of donors huddled for a meeting at a luxury hotel in Apsen, Colo., where a one-night stay easily exceeds a $20-an-hour worker’s weekly salary. “[O]ne person asked the crowd for a show of hands of how many thought Mr. Biden should step aside. Nearly everyone in the room raised their hands, according to two people present,” the paper reported.
Interestingly—or perhaps unsurprisingly—donors who disagree with Biden’s pursit of a second term amid dire poll numbers are more concerned about what their fellow donor friends think than the perception that elites have a hand in potentially pushing out the president.
“Toeing this line makes us look almost, but not quite, as morally bankrupt as the Republican Party,” Maggie Kulyk, who runs a wealth management firm, told the Times. “I mean, c’mon, man! Know when to say when.”
“Ms. Kulyk added that donor coalitions might be timid about calling out Mr. Biden because they do not want to alienate donors ‘who feel strongly that we just need to stay the course.’”
The biggest problem for Biden may not be the polls—which are bad—but money, an increasingly sore subject prior to the debate as Trump effectively erased Biden’s months-long fundraising advantage.
CNN reported this week that “everything is frozen” and quoted one Democratic operative who said major donations have “slowed remarkably” since debate night.
To assuage concerns with the donor class, Biden got on a hastily arranged called with his network of big spenders on July 8. It sounded less like an opportunity for the president to reassure skittish elites than an occasion for the most wealthy Americans to decide if Biden was up for the job.
Not everyone is bailing from the Biden train, however.
Dmitri Mehlhorn a major Democratic fundraiser who works closely with billionaire venture capitalist Reid Hoffman recently did a long interview with journalist Ryan Grim in which he defended Biden, his record, and his ability to overcome the perilous few months ahead.
“My two contentions are that Joe Biden's decision-making process is really good and that his ability to implement and communicate and effectuate those decisions is really good,” Mehlhorn said.
He comes off as a true believer.
“I think the best possible evidence is how good of a job is Biden doing at presidenting today?” he added. “So let's look at the international leaders. International leaders call Biden personally when they need help. That is why he travels to war zones. They want him personally. Look at domestic negotiations in the Senate. When they have a walk logjam, they call him, personally. And if you think that the left has been hiding Biden's ability to do that well, Kevin McCarthy was caught saying, against interest, that actually that's not the case that when Joe Biden is embedded within his team and intervenes in those places he is the closer and everybody knows it.”
Despite concerns from his top spenders, the most damaging thing to happen to Biden since the debate was George Clooney’s op-ed in the Times this week. While everyone obsessed over Clooney’s remarks about how Biden isn’t the same man from even four years ago, it was this line that should’ve, again, caused consternation over the democracy warriors in media:
“We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private.”
Populist Joe?
Shortly after Biden's debate performance in June, some version of this sentiment ricocheted around social media: "Save us, oligarchs." I get it. Voters, especially those on the left, have been frustrated with Biden. His funding of the Palestinian genocide and endless support for Israel has served as a red line for millions. They want him out, and if this is the way, so be it.
But the donor push has turned Biden into a sympathetic figure. Indeed, "Genocide Joe" is apparently afforded endless amounts of pity.
Biden himself has engaged in populist, anti-billionaire class rhetoric, albeit out of self-preservation.
"I'm getting so frustrated by the elites—I'm not talking about you guys," Biden said recently on his favorite cable news show, "Morning Joe."
Here's Biden in his letter to members of Congress in which he rejected the notion of dropping out:
"I feel a deep obligation to the faith and the trust the voters of the Democratic Party have placed in me to run this year. It was their decision to make. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned. The voters—and the voters alone—decide the nominee of the Democratic Party."
Unfortunately, voters didn't actually get a chance to decide the nominee. Biden knows that. The Democratic Party knows that. The voters know that.
The people who will ultimately decide, it appears, are the donors.
The implications for "democracy" are huge.
But when democracy can buy you a lavish suite in Aspen, what is there to worry about, really?