The billionaires hate us because we have more money than they do
But they have more big money and love their tax cuts. And that’s the problem.
Last week served us a nice sampler plate of why fascism looks favored in the fall.
Media Matters for America, one of the few left-leaning organizations that continually dents the right-wing media, announced a significant round of layoffs, right as the organization should be staffing up for the election season, possibly the most consequential election season of our lifetime if you believe—and you should—that the verdict voters apply to Trump in November will decide if fascism is possible in America. This appears to be entirely the result of a lawsuit from Elon Musk targeting the organization for daring to report that ads ended up near Nazis on Twitter, a wild accusation to make considering Elon literally invited Nazis back to the site, including the most famous neo-Nazi in America, who also dined at Maralago not long ago.
Meanwhile, Moms for Liberty, the freaky—literally freaky—book banners that have created a noxious presence on school boards across America in a few short years, announced they will have $3 million to target races in swing states. This shows an effort to fund “reverse coattails” efforts that could ultimately decide a presidential election between two unpopular candidates.
Meanwhile, Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire who runs Blackstone private equity and who once compared Obama raising taxes on the rich to the Nazis invading Poland, endorsed Donald Trump. This is a reminder that it’s not just us. For the right, this election is about fascism. Because for them, having to pay slightly higher taxes is fascism.
Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise previewed the carrot the right is offering to all of America’s wealthiest concerns by promising to use any Republican majority to extend Trump’s massive giveaways to those in the top tax brackets.
This self-perpetuating cycle of vice and plunder reminds us why Republicans are always difficult to defeat. Add in their immoral advantage in the electoral college, the Supreme Court, and in an electoral system mutilated by the end of the full powers of the Voting Rights Act and you get a fuller sense of the GOP’s head start in national elections. Now we have to factor in a right-wing media structure that offers a multi-billion-dollar endless campaign to keep America polarized and put that to the power of Musk’s unprecedented attempt to put his member on the scale of this election by turning his $44 billion purchase of Twitter into an anti-Joe Biden Super PAC. Now multiply that by an extraordinarily effective demagogue running to become a dictator and again asking for the help of Vladimir Putin in achieving that aim. And you have to divide all that by the fact that the press and voters actually expect Democrats to govern, not run around giving everyone in the White House COVID and costing a Secret Service officer part of his leg.
Yet, despite that, the right could still be at a disadvantage and should be. Because no matter how rich they are, we are richer.
And by “we,” I mean the 69% of Americans in swing states who want higher taxes on billionaires, according to a recent Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
If this election were plainly about the top-level issues–reproductive rights, taxing the rich, keeping and expanding Obamacare, fighting Climate Change instead of purposely accelerating it, actual immigration reform–the question wouldn’t be if Democrats would win. The question would be, “Could we get 60% in Florida?” the way the abortion rights amendment on the ballot this November must.
But elections aren’t about scorecards of issues. They’re about identity. They’re about focus.
And for the right, they’re about power, exclusively.
The monied forces in America spend tens if not hundreds of billions making elections not about the issues they live in constant fear of anything that might “reduce their wealth somewhat.” And they’re even willing to sacrifice wealth because they know better than anyone that the economy does better under Democrats, if that means they don’t have to give up power–their power to plunder, pollute, and preach how the rest of us, the 69%+, should live.
Republicans, in general, have vast sums of money to throw around. A fracking billionaire will spend tens of millions to create Daily Wire and put Ben Shapiro’s noxious whining in the ears of millions of young men. Elon will buy Twitter. The oil companies will take a quid-pro-quo offer to purchase the election so they can get back to the serious business of making the planet unlivable.
But we, together, somehow have more money. We will flood billions to candidates and causes. Unfortunately, far too much of it will come too late and be wasted on increasingly expensive TV ads. And very little will be spent building up progressive infrastructure, community, and news sources.
The right’s billionaires may be poorer than us, but they’re more strategic. They see the value in creating an information pipeline and investing in an entire ecosystem. That’s mainly because they love tax cuts. But it’s also because they’re feeding their inner authoritarian who loves propaganda. The left will never have that. We’ll never have the legions who are proud of being immune to facts, who assert lies to show allegiance and dominance, who hate democracy so much that they’ll use the ballot to destroy it.
But we’ll always have the numbers. The challenge is to figure out, somehow, how to channel them so that we’re not just funding our demise.
That’s what the earlyworm society is all about. We dream of it being a sort of union for democracy where we use our collective influence to boost and shape democracy, a strike force that helps deliver the necessary knowledge and resources when they’re needed most. It’s a wild ambition. But it makes a lot more sense than doing nothing.
