For years, the progressive left has warned that the 1% are buying our elections, corrupting our democracy, and using their obscene wealth to drown out the voices of ordinary Americans. Their virtual protest signs read “Keep your billions out of our ballots!” “Oligarchs stink and so does their money!” “EAT THE RICH AND USE THEIR SKULLS TO MAKE SOUP BOWLS!”
Unless, you know, the billionaires are throwing serious cash at progressive candidates in a uniquely consequential midterm election. Then presumably it’s “Eat the poor rich but save the fattest cats for the donor appreciation dinner.”
According to a new Wall Street Journal investigation, America’s cancerous socialist movement has attracted something even more valuable than a generation of economically illiterate young voters: rich people willing to buy even more of them.
These aren’t your garden-variety $27 Bernie Sanders donors I’m talking about here, either. They’re tech millionaires, billionaire heirs, mysterious Delaware organizations, and previously unknown political sugar daddies emerging from their tax shelters to write checks with enough zeroes to finance a small revolution.
The guy whose pen is lowest on ink is none other than Saikat Chakrabarti, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff, who made a fortune as a founding engineer at payment-processing giant Stripe. Chakrabarti has reportedly poured more than $13 million into progressive campaigns and causes just this election cycle. Yes, a guy who became spectacularly wealthy thanks to capitalism is now spending millions to elect politicians who believe the same system that made him rich should be taken out behind the barn and shot.
But tell me again how the left is fighting for the little guy.
Meanwhile, Alex Soros, heir to daddy George’s multibillion-dollar fortune, has been sharing the family allowance with progressive politicians including Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal. The Soros family plans to dump millions more into Democratic causes this year. Apparently, inherited wealth is fine if you spend it telling everyone else to share.
Then there’s American Priorities, a super PAC that has raked in around $5.7 million from its top twelve donors, most of whom had barely dipped a toe into political fundraising before waking up one morning with an inexplicable urge to underwrite the destruction of the free market system. Generous benefactors include Mohammad Waqas, Omer Hasan, Afaq Ahmed, Idris Mokhtarzada, Nasser Barghouti, and Haroon Mokhtarzada. John Smith and Mary Jones must have missed the memo about the socialist uprising.
The group’s two largest donors alone reportedly contributed $2.1 million. Another $470,000 came from a Delaware-based nonprofit called Fig and Olive Action—so biblical!—which doesn’t disclose the identities of its underlying funders and also doesn’t have a website or meaningful digital footprint. Because nothing says power to the people quite like anonymous money flowing through what looks suspiciously like a fairly generous shell organization.
Twelve donors. Apparently the entire grassroots fit in a Ford Transit.
In theory, I have no problem with the ridiculously well-to-do supporting their pet political causes. Assuming they didn’t rob an orphanage, manufacture or promote a mandated bioweapon, or sell defective parachutes to the military, it’s their money. If they earned it or inherited it or married someone who did, they’re entitled to spend it however they like. But when the people cashing the checks are wearing “money corrupts politics” hoodies, it’s fair to ask why they never mentioned the flexible donor exemption clause before.
Just this past May, AOC declared that “the influence of big money in politics is a major reason why everyday Americans struggle to trust our institutions and our work in Congress.” Her former chief of staff, meanwhile, is practically operating his own progressive political ATM, with no withdrawal limits and a complimentary lecture about income inequality. Cute.
Bernie Sanders has made a decent living warning Americans that our democracy is “a political system dominated by billionaires and their super PACs.” In May, he even introduced the Abolish Super PACs Act [*tour dates TBD]. All of which is awkward, considering those same super PACs are now bankrolling his favorite socialists.
And then there’s New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who famously declared, “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.” (Well, I don’t think we should have closet communists who want to abolish private property and defund the police running the financial capital of the world, so you’re welcome to suck it, sir.) It’s an interesting position for a man whose political success has inspired a fresh crop of wealthy capitalists to diversify their portfolios with a little venture socialism.
Evidently, billionaires shouldn’t exist, but until we get around to eliminating them, we might as well cash their checks.
And here’s the thing: A seven-figure donation to a super PAC isn’t automatically illegal. These groups can accept unlimited contributions from otherwise eligible American citizens and entities—provided the money isn’t secretly coming from the Kremlin, the Chinese Communist Party, or some guy in Qatar with a suitcase full of cash. Super PACs are also supposed to operate independently of the candidates they support, although “independently” is doing a lot of heavy lifting these days. Alas, being rich and politically annoying is, regrettably, still legal.
But legal isn’t the same thing as transparent—and a conveniently opaque Delaware nonprofit on a disclosure form tells you approximately as much about who’s financing the revolution as the tag on the ski mask tells you about who’s robbing the bank. Sure, the practice of wealthy people supporting politicians who share their beliefs is as old as the first toga with pockets. But for a movement that has spent years insisting that money corrupts politics, that billionaires shouldn’t wield disproportionate influence, and that ordinary Americans deserve a government free from wealthy special interests, the sudden enthusiasm for seven-figure checks is a rather spectacular ideological U-turn.
Not to be outdone, the Democratic Socialists of America are also getting creative with fundraising. Not content with its traditional $15-a-month suggested membership donation, the organization has rolled out the Marxist equivalent of a premium subscription, complete with a paycheck-based guilt surcharge: members are now being encouraged to cough up a flat 1% (or more, obviously!) of their incomes through something called “Solidarity Dues.”
Their actual slogan? “Give your 1% for the 99%.” I guess “Give us your money so we can take everybody else’s” didn’t test as well.
It turns out the problem was never really rich people influencing elections. It was [*checks notes*] rich people backing the wrong candidates.
Who would have ever thought the Down with Capitalism Tour™ would be sponsored by capitalism?
POLL REDUX FOR FINICKY PHONES:
What’s the biggest threat to the socialist revolution?
Running out of other people’s money
Someone explaining basic economics
The kids being too lazy to revolt
Capitalism refusing to die
*combo/unsure/other
When tens of millions are spent to secure a position that pays a couple hundred thousand a year, an elementary school math student would tell you there is "math" occurring outside of that equation. That's why a lot of politicians end up wealthy.
The crooks who donate the big money aren't doing it out of benevolence either. Their "donations" fall in the "leverage" category. It's just an investment.
The middle class is footing the bill for all the above.
Can we call a spade a spade here?
It's NOT THE BILLIONAIRES, but it's the billion-dollar 'public education establishment' churning out 'economically illiterate voters' by the literal busloads. "WHY," one agonizes, "do their leaders not only get an invisibility pass but simultaneously get to wear self-stitched 'hero' cloaks?"