An election for the billionaires
There are two presidential elections taking place in the United States in 2024. The voting by the American population, which culminates on Election Day on November 5, will receive the bulk of the media attention.
Far more decisive, however, is the second election, which is going on right now, in which a relative handful of billionaires and corporate oligarchs decides which of the candidates of the two established capitalist parties, Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican ex-President Donald Trump, will better serve their class interests.
As of March 31, the Biden campaign had more than double the cash on hand of Trump and the Republicans, $192 million compared to $93.1 million. The Biden campaign is touting the fact that its war chest is the highest total amount amassed by a Democratic candidate in US history. It includes $26 million raked in two weeks ago in Manhattan, where three Democratic presidents—Biden, Obama and Clinton—and an array of Hollywood and Broadway performers appeared before an audience with ticket prices that topped out at $500,000.
Trump’s efforts were given a boost at a record fundraiser Saturday night, held at the estate of hedge fund billionaire John Paulson in Palm Beach, a short distance from Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago compound. The price of admission ranged up to $800,000, and the 117 guests ponied up a total of $50.5 million in campaign pledges, nearly double Biden’s total at last month’s Radio City Music Hall event.
“Tonight, we raised an historic $50.5 million for the re-election of President Trump,” Paulson wrote in a statement to the media Saturday evening. “This sold-out event has raised the most in a single political fundraiser in history. This overwhelming support demonstrates the enthusiasm for President Trump and his policies.”
The enthusiasm of the assembled billionaires was no doubt fueled by Trump’s 2017 tax cut for the wealthy and by the fact that the exemption for “pass-through” corporations, worth $700 billion to private equity firms and other speculative ventures, will expire in 2025, the first year of the new presidency. Trump’s open embrace of fascist violence is seen by an increasing section of the ruling elite as necessary to crush social opposition to its policies of austerity and war.
Unfortunately for his electoral prospects, however, Biden’s attempts to present himself as a “man of the people” have become increasingly strained. “Middle-class Joe” has been displaced by “Genocide Joe” in public consciousness, as he has become indelibly associated with the war crimes being committed by Israel in Gaza, armed and financed by the Biden administration.
Biden continues to collect multimillion-dollar amounts at closed-door meetings with wealthy supporters on virtually every campaign swing. On Monday, for example, he traveled to Wisconsin to unveil his latest political swindle, a proposed reduction in college student loan repayments, which will provide little actual benefit. Air Force One then touched down at O’Hare Airport in Chicago so Biden could attend a fundraiser that collected $2.5 million from about two dozen individuals (roughly $100,000 apiece).
The co-hosts of this affair were Michael Pratt, who runs GCM Grosvenor, a $77 billion hedge fund specializing in “alternative,” i.e., socially “progressive” investments, and Laura Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and daughter of the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade.
Over the weekend, Politico published a revealing account of the 2024 campaign headlined, “Big-dollar fundraisers are back,” which noted that both parties are relying on small affairs where Trump and Biden schmooze with the super-rich to raise the bulk of their campaign funds. This is particularly important for the Democrats, the website reported, citing the comments of former Obama fundraiser Ami Copeland:
For Biden, burying Trump in cash is central to his general election strategy. He’s started with a sizable financial advantage over the former president, and hosting splashy, high-dollar fundraisers helps to further pad that edge. “His cash advantage is existential,” Copeland said, because “it’s the thing working the best on the campaign right now.”
The fundraising for both campaigns seems inversely related to their actual support, given that polls and media accounts generally concede that Biden and Trump are the two most unpopular political figures in America. Small-donor fundraising, which was up substantially in 2016 and 2020, driven initially by support for the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders and later by opposition to (or support for) Trump’s fascist demagogy, has slowed significantly this year.
The massive domination of money is only one aspect of an electoral process that is completely undemocratic and aimed at excluding any opposition to the capitalist two-party system. The Democratic Party, in particular, has taken the lead in waging an “all-out war” on third party and independent candidates, which will focus on challenging their efforts to meet massive signature requirements to gain a place on the ballot.
This is the state of American democracy in 2024: One of the two major parties is controlled by the perpetrator of an attempted fascist coup to overturn the 2020 election, while the other party will renominate the president responsible for an ongoing war against nuclear-armed Russia and the first genocide of the 21st century.
The Socialist Equality Party entered the 2024 elections to provide a genuine choice for the working class, Joe Kishore for president and Jerry White for vice president, running on a socialist and antiwar program.
In a statement posted on X/Twitter Monday responding to the massive domination of money over the election, Kishore wrote:
As Marxists have long explained, the state is not a neutral arbiter but an instrument of class rule. It is controlled by a ruling class that supports the genocide in #Gaza and an escalating global war, while waging a war on the social and democratic rights of the working class at home.
The Socialist Equality Party campaign is aimed at developing a movement in the working class. The existential questions confronting workers in the US and throughout the world will not be resolved by tinkering around the edges, by hoping for “change” within the existing political structure. The working class has to take up the fight against the entire social and economic system of capitalism. This is the essential question, and the only way to oppose the drive of the ruling class to world war, dictatorship and capitalist barbarism.
The central issue in the 2024 elections is to bring the class questions of jobs, living standards, social benefits, democratic rights and war before the widest possible audience and to win the most politically advanced sections of workers and youth to the program of revolutionary Marxism.
Sen. Bill Hagerty: Time to Close the Loophole Allowing Foreign Billionaires to Interfere in Our Elections
After years of hysteria over Russiagate and alleged foreign influence in American elections, you might be surprised to learn that—despite a federal ban on foreign-national contributions in U.S. elections—Democrats’ efforts in recent election cycles to retake the White House and Congress were fueled by half-a-billion dollars from a shadowy foreign billionaire with a stated goal of turning the U.S. Constitution into a left-wing political tool.
This week I’m introducing the Preventing Foreign interference in American Elections Act to close this foreign-influence loophole. My legislation would prohibit foreign nationals from circumventing the current ban and from funding voter mobilization operations, election administration, or ballot measures.
As with so many aspects of American politics, it’s important to watch what Democrats do, not what they say. Four years ago, Joe Biden proclaimed that “[f]oreign interference in the U.S. electoral process represents an assault on the American people and their constitutional right to vote.” Chuck Schumer repeated George Washington’s warning that “foreign interference [in our elections] is one of the most baneful foes of Republican government.” Nancy Pelosi intoned: “Our Founders were specifically intent on ensuring that foreign entities did not undermine the integrity of our elections.”
That’s why federal law bars foreign nationals from contributing to U.S. political campaigns, political parties, and campaign ads. But this hasn’t stopped a Swiss billionaire named Hansjorg Wyss from attempting to reshape American politics through the election of Democrats.
How?
Decades ago, Wyss donated directly to Democrat candidates and political action committees, apparently in violation of law, but in recent years he has developed more sophisticated techniques for unleashing roughly $500 million to influence American elections.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (left) and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss at a charity benefit in New York City on April 1, 2015. (Craig Barritt/Getty Images)
The New York Times describes his methodology as using his Wyss Foundation and Berger Action Fund and a “daisy chain of opaque organizations that mask the ultimate recipients of his money” to shell out $208 million from 2016 to 2020 to groups that helped Democrats take the White House and Congress and advance their agenda.
Though it would be illegal for Wyss to donate to a political campaign or PAC involved in U.S. elections, the Berger Action Fund gave more than $135 million in a four-year stretch to a Washington, D.C. nonprofit called the Sixteen Thirty Fund—which then itself gave $63 million in 2020 to Super PACs that supported President Biden or other Democrats that year, after having spent $141 million in 2018 to oppose the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, influence ballot initiatives, and change voting laws.
The Berger Action Fund then poured $72 million into Democrat-aligned groups in 2021, more than $62 million of which went to groups running ads promoting Democrat candidates in the 2022 midterms and supporting President Biden’s agenda. Another $63 million followed in 2022.
Why?
According to Wyss’s sister, his ultimate goal in spending hundreds of millions to influence U.S. elections is to “[re]interpret the American Constitution in the light of progressive politics.” My legislation is designed to prevent this.
President Joe Biden speaks during a dinner reception at the White House on Feb. 11, 2023. The Berger Action Fund has routed millions of dollars from Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss through a network of nonprofit groups that have helped bankroll efforts to lift Biden’s agenda.(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
To cut Wyss’s “daisy chain” of organizations that funnel his money to groups backing Democrat campaigns, my bill would outlaw foreign nationals from using instructions, intermediaries, or conduits to engage in prohibited U.S. election-related activity. Though Wyss’s organizations dubiously claim to ensure that their funds are not used by recipients in American campaigns or elections, this loophole should be closed in law.
My bill would also prohibit foreign-national funding for ballot harvesting, get-out-the-vote activity, promoting a particular political party, or election administration activity to prevent a repeat of the “Zuckerbucks” of 2020. Finally, it would stop foreign nationals from spending to influence state and local ballot initiatives, as beneficiaries of the Wyss largesse have done in recent election cycles.
To prevent infringement on Americans’ free-speech rights, the legislation contains safeguards that prevent abusive investigations and pretextual government collection or disclosure of Americans’ donor information.
Federal law rightly reflects the judgment of most Americans that foreign influence in American elections is improper. But it needs an update to match modern tactics. If Democrats are serious about safeguarding American democracy and self-government, they’ll join my bill.
Bill Hagerty is a United States Senator from Tennessee and a former U.S. ambassador to Japan.
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