These people have been such financial winners that they can afford to indulge in personally painless virtue-signaling by backing policies that cause hardship for the less fortunate.
In this final stage of the 2024 presidential election, it feels as if the only thing going well for Vice President Kamala Harris is fundraising.
Cash is pouring into her coffers on such a scale that some reports suggest the campaign is reluctant to be seen “bragging” about it.
Of course, it proves — just as Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton did in 2016 — that no amount of money can make up for a terrible candidate.
And boy is Kamala Harris a terrible candidate.
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From the embarrassing, scripted, substance-free teleprompter speeches, to the terror of answering real questions, to the calamitous responses she gives even to entirely predictable questions, it’s easy to see why Kamala Harris’ previous presidential campaign collapsed into mediocrity, failure and finger-pointing after the sugar-high of its launch.
It’s harder to see why Democrats thought it would be any different this time. The only thing that changed since 2020 was Kamala Harris proving to be a flop as vice president, too.
Nevertheless, there does seem to be one group of Americans who are still feeling “the joy.” Unfortunately for the Harris campaign, it’s not Black men, Hispanic women, or any other large block of voters.
Instead, it’s a very small group indeed: billionaires. Yes, the same “billionaire class” that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., rails against as he waves his hands around conjuring up a socialist utopia, is all in for Kamala, according to recent reporting.
What could explain this apparent contradiction, the traditional party of the left attracting the support of capitalism’s ultimate beneficiaries?
Well, the answer is right there: the fact that these people have been such financial winners means they can afford to indulge in personally painless virtue-signaling by backing policies that would cause real hardship for the less fortunate.
Who cares if a Kamala Harris administration continues to inflate energy costs with a renewed bout of ‘climate’ extremism? The billionaires will barely notice the extra charges for their private jets. In winter time they won’t have to choose between heating their home(s) and cooking their food. They’ll most likely be in St. Bart’s anyway.
These aren’t bad people. Living and working in Silicon Valley, I know some of them personally — for example, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, probably the leading billionaire antagonist of Donald Trump, was years ago the lead investor in my tech startup. He recently found himself in hot water over claims that he and other billionaire donors were trying to buy outcomes, for example, more lax enforcement of antitrust laws.
But I don’t think this is about furthering business interests. They have armies of lobbyists for that.
No, supporting Kamala Harris — or more precisely, opposing Donald Trump — isn’t primarily a financial, or even political decision: it’s more likely to be cultural and psychological.
After all, it’s hard to find a rational explanation. In every major category of policy: economic, domestic security, foreign affairs and national security, Trump’s performance in office was demonstrably superior to the Biden-Harris years.
But from the moment Trump appeared on the political scene in 2015, you could feel the wealthy elite recoil. He’s just not to their taste. They think he’s “vulgar.” How appalling that he likes McDonald’s!
Of course, the cultural snobbery needs to be dressed up in some kind of principle, so they have glommed on to the notion, endlessly repeated, that Trump is a “threat to democracy.” Even as the Democratic Party is the one actually undermining democracy, for example by overturning elections here in California.
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For some, the psychological drive to support Kamala Harris might be the age-old motivation of assuaging guilt. In this sense, it could be seen as just another form of philanthropy. (Except that philanthropy, generally speaking, helps people.)
Now to be clear, I don’t have anything against billionaires. I support the free enterprise system wholeheartedly. My parents were working-class immigrants from Communist Hungary, so I don’t begrudge a rich person their wealth. If they’ve achieved their financial success through hard work and talent, good for them.
But as long as I can remember, my focus in politics has been helping people climb the ladder of opportunity. And it became increasingly clear to me that the establishment policy consensus of the past 50 years or so had failed working people badly.
That’s why I supported Brexit in 2016, and then Trump. It’s why the theme of my Fox News show “The Next Revolution,” and the book I wrote in 2018, was “Positive Populism.”
I said at the time that the Republican Party had the opportunity to become a “multiracial working class coalition.” After nearly a decade of Trump leading the GOP, that opportunity has become a reality.
It’s based on economic results. During the Trump presidency, the earnings of those at the lowest levels of the income scale rose faster than those at the top, for the first time in half a century.
That’s why we’re seeing this extraordinary political transformation in America, with the GOP becoming the workers’ party while the Democrats become the party of the billionaires.
And ironically enough, it was a billionaire who did it — Donald Trump, the blue-collar billionaire. His cultural appeal and policy success brought about a truly historic political revolution, Republicans representing the working class of all races and backgrounds, leaving the Democrats and their billionaire backers stranded as the party of the rich, white and woke.
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