ARE BILLIONAIRES THE BIGGEST THREAT TO DEMOCRACY ?
By Sonali Kolhatkar
When President Joe Biden said in a phone call to MSNBC ’ s Morning Joe recently , “ I ’ m getting so frustrated with the elites … the elites of the party . I don ’ t care what the millionaires think ,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote that , “ It was the first time any modern president has admitted that the elites of the party are the millionaires ( and billionaires ) who fund it .”
While Biden ’ s comments were in reference to the movement to oust him from the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination , it was an important admission about who really wields power in our democracy .
We may think of elections in terms of one person , one vote . But , not only do undemocratic structures such as the electoral college dilute our votes , the money that elites flaunt places a hefty thumb on the scales of who represents us . Yet , we hear more about the threat of , say , immigrants than the threat of billionaires , to our democracy .
Billionaires have tried very hard to buy influence and political power . For example , former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg donated $ 20 million toward efforts to reelect Biden this year alone . Four years ago , Bloomberg spent a whopping $ 1 billion in just four months in an attempt to be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee . In a testament to the fact that we have a modicum of democratic accountability left within the system as it stands , he failed spectacularly , as others have often done . Voters seem to have a distaste for electing the ultra-rich but have yet to disavow the de facto proxies that their money helps elect .
While billionaires remain influential within the Democratic Party , the last election for which spending records exist shows that moneyed elites overwhelmingly prefer the Republican Party . The nation ’ s 465 wealthiest people collectively donated $ 881 million to influence the 2022 midterm elections , most of it to the GOP .
Now , the richest person in the world — not just in the United States — Elon Musk , has jumped into the 2024 race . His proxy , Donald Trump , in surviving an assassination attempt , earned Musk ’ s endorsement , as if that was somehow a qualification to run the nation . Musk has vowed to pour $ 45 million a month into a new Super PAC that ’ s working to elect Trump . The amount is pocket change for someone currently worth nearly $ 250 billion . Musk could spend $ 45 million a day every day this year and it would barely make a dent in his bottom line .
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