Provocations: Follow the money trail: a cynic’s guide
Money is the mother’s milk of politics. So declared the late Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh, the Democratic Party political boss of California, whose influence extended all the way to the East Coast.
If Big Daddy was right — and there’s every indication he was — then today’s Democratic Party is a dairy farm awash in
— forgive the pun — buckets of moola.
And it’s no longer mainly labor union donors that are keeping the party afloat. The corporate and Wall Street plutocracts are investing big bucks in the party, the party that bills itself as the tribune of the working stiff.
Oh, the corporate/Wall Street plutocrats, of course, are providing the mother’s milk of politics to the Grand Ol’ Party as well. And a shrewd investment it seems to be, too.
The GOP is inclined to reciprocate appreciatively with favorable tax and regulatory tweaks
— and to parrot Big Business’ “free enterprise” pieties.
But this you already knew, because the news media constantly bring it to your attention.
The media, however, for whatever reasons, are disinclined to dwell on the Democratic Party’s attachment to the plutocracy’s political-financing udder.
“Plutocracy” is just the right word for our political arrangements today.
The word is of ancient Greek origin — from “ploutos,” meaning wealth, and “kratia,” meaning rule. Plutocracy: the rule of wealth.
Thanks to the populist oratory of such Democratic firebrands as Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, you may have gotten the misimpression that the Democratic Party hopes to do to capitalism what Alaric and his Visigoth barbarian hordes did to Rome.
But how likely is it, really, that the Democratic Party will give capitalism a good sacking even if the party gets the chance? If it did so, the party would be biting not just the hand that feeds it but the hand that fetes it. Let’s follow the money.
In 2018, the top 50 business contributors through their political action committees and other mechanisms gave a whopping, colossal, stupendous $304,119,792 to Democrats.
That was $68,705,930 more — more — than these fat-cat business interests gave to Republicans.
The figures are from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
The center monitors the flow of the mother’s milk of politics.
If numbers tend to make your eyes glaze over, fear not. The center’s list of biggest donors, of fattest fat cats — “Heavy Hitters,” it calls them — are more likely to make your eyes pop right out of your head than glaze over.
Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren rant and gesticulate wildly, he playing the Bolshevik, she the Menshevik. But don’t be snookered.
How likely is it that a party that took $304 million-plus in one year from the Silicon Valley corporate robber barons and Wall Street malefactors of great wealth — 29 percent more than the Republican Party took — how likely is it that such a party is going to instigate an incomelevelling revolution?
Yes, the Democratic Party’s rhetoric today does conjure images of riled-up masses marching on the czar’s Winter Palace. But — c’mon — what are the odds today’s Democrats are gonna light torches and storm the New York Stock Exchange? Let’s get real.
Right-wingers should take a deep breath and relax. And leftwingers should refrain from building up expectations destined to lead only to disappointment.
True, today’s Democratic presidential candidates do talk like they’re out to upend the old order. They sometimes sound like they’re reenacting Vladimir Lenin’s arrival at Finland Station in Petrograd. But let’s all calm down.
Democrats, it turns out — even liberal ones — love money too. They’re closet capitalists!
Who loves money more than the Democratic Party’s sugar daddy multibillionaires? For example, international currency manipulator
George Soros? Or hedge-fund hotshot Tom Steyer, himself a candidate for president?
The Soros Management Fund in 2018 donated $20,228,121 to Democrats. Steyer, who made a fortune in coal but now champions drastic measures against “global warming,” donated $73,146,531 to Democrats last year through his Fahr LLC. If ever there was a Scrooge McDuck capitalist wallowing in obscene wealth, it’s these two.
And, speaking of lovers of money, how about Bill and Hillary Clinton, socking away those outsized speech fees even as hundreds of millions of dollars from various tycoons, magnates and moguls slosh around in their Clinton foundation?
Or, how about the Biden kid piling up impressive millions wheeling and dealing in China with a sleazy little assist or two from the old man?
As for Republicans, it hardly comes as news that they have long been fervent worshippers of mammon. It’s a theme the media are pleased to harp on without letup. And, yes, it’s a theme with a point.
Indeed, no devout Catholic ever kissed the Pope’s ring with a louder smacking sound than Republicans make when, for example, kissing the rear end of Sheldon Adelson. He’s a billionaire casino Midas with gaming interests in Vegas, Singapore and Macao.
Heavy Hitter? He’s the Jabba the Hutt of political donors. The Heavy Hitters’ list shows his financial interests having favored Republicans with $123,737,219 of donations in 2018.
Impressive though that sum is, however, it’s still overshadowed by the donations bestowed on Democrats by the fat-cat corporate interests of aforementioned Fahr LLC and Bloomberg LP. Together, just these two Great Gatsby money geysers showered the party with
a combined downpour of $168,775,160 in 2018 donations.
So it looks like it’s pretty much your rich guy against my rich guy.
Here the Democrats have not only the advantage of bottom-line numbers. They also enjoy the advantage of a more diversified financial portfolio.
While the party is now well positioned at the receiving end of the Big Business horn of plenty, it still remains lucratively tapped into labor union treasuries. Functioning largely as party fundraising conduits, five public employee unions, alone, funneled $114,379,146 to Democrats in 2018.
(And virtually zilch to Republicans.)
The unions seem to be locked in a bidding war with the capitalist plutocrats for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. In a bidding war, capital — money — plays the role of ammunition. And the plutocrats have the upper hand here. It’s why they’re called plutocrats. They have the ploutos, the capital.
Oddly enough, today’s very top fat cats — today’s Jacob Astors, John D. Rockefellers and Cornelius Vanderbilts — are betting the big bucks on business-bashing Democrats. Either betting on them, or — as some think — paying them off. Paying them off in hopes their rhetoric remains just talk without ever getting transformed into action.
Check out these numbers for 2018 business donations:
— Microsoft, $11.8 million to Democrats, $1.7 million to Republicans.
— Alphabet (corporate parent of Google), $6.9 million to Democrats, $1.2 million to Republicans.
— Amazon, $2.4 million to Democrats, $1.05 million to Republicans.
— Bain Capital . . . . Do you remember Bain?
It’s where Mitt Romney made a fortune to top off the one he inherited.
When Romney ran for president, Bain was demonized in Obama TV campaign ads as a merciless ogre of scorched-earth capitalism, as a Dickensian scourge destroying jobs and snatching away dying employees’ medical coverage. Remember now?
Here are Bain’s political donations for 2018: Democrats, $8.4 million, Republicans, $0.1 million.
Here are Bain’s donations since 1990: Democrats, $17.5 million, Republicans, $7.5 million.
The rhetoric of the Democratic presidential primary debates does sound a lot like the vicious, sectarian hair-splitting of Leninvs.-Trotsky days. Yet, the party drifts along on capitalist cash, drifts along as
placidly as summer punters floating down Oxford’s River Cherwell under their parasol umbrellas.
The behemoth Comcast Corp. gave $27.6 million to Democrats over a period of three decades, $9.5 million more than to Republicans.
Over that same period, Goldman Sachs, the King Kong of Wall Street capitalism, gave Democrats $33.8 million, Republicans $2.9 million less than that sum.
It’s surprising to see that the endlessly reviled NRA doesn’t even make the “Heavy Hitters” cut. And this despite the daily flood of stories bemoaning the NRA’s political clout.
Contrast the NRA’s 2018 donations with the donations of NextGen Climate Action, a global-warming alarmist lobby founded by the aforementioned hedgefund Scrooge McDuck, Tom Stayer.
NRA: $880,500 total donations, mostly to Republicans.
NextGen Climate Action: $12,897,357 total donations, exclusively to Democrats.
Meanwhile, Republicans receive very little of the political donations gurgling forth from the fountains of labor union treasuries. For example,
Service Employees International Union last year gave $41,452,441 to Democrats, a niggling $1,157 to Republicans. So it goes with other union donations.
But Democrats, in contrast, manage to finagle sizeable servings of cash from corporate and financial interests, even when the larger share goes to Republicans.
For example, since 1990, even when Republicans received the lion’s portion of corporate/Wall Street contributions, Democrats still walked away with a hefty piece of the action, including, to cite just a few examples:
— $35.1 million from AT&T.
— $30 million from the National Association of Realtors.
— $20.4 million from JP Morgan Chase.
— $20.2 million from Citigroup.
— $18.1 million from GE.
— $17 million from Bank of America.
— $16.1 million from Morgan Stanley.
— $15.4 million from Honeywell.
— $14.7 million from Verizon.
— $13.3 million from UBS.
— $10.6 million from Wells Fargo.
Three cynical explanations leap to mind regarding the major manna that Big Business continues to dole out to the Democratic Party, despite the party’s hostile-sounding rhetoric:
1. Big Business simply doesn’t believe that the party is the destructive force the right wing and the party’s own propaganda suggest it is.
2. Big Business keeps making donations to the party in the same spirit shop owners paid “protection” money to the Mafia
— i.e., in hopes of avoiding a spontaneous combustion, in this case a spontaneous combustion of onerous regulatory measures and tax hikes.
3. Big Business views its donations as being in the nature of a purchase, of acquiring title to property, and hopes the Democratic Party, once bought, will stay bought, as the Plutocracy is satisfied the other party has.