Dear Commons Community,
Today is Election Day and everyone regardless of political affiliation should go out and vote for the candidates of their choice. Besides the all-important Presidential election, there are also critical Congressional elections to be decided. So please take the time to VOTE!
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Almost 80 million ballots have already been cast in 47 states and the District of Columbia, according to data gathered by CNN, Edison Research and Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups, including insights into who is voting before November.
The data offers a sense of who is choosing to vote ahead of Election Day, but it isn’t predictive of election results. For instance, we don’t know who people are voting for, and the data doesn’t include the millions of Americans who will head to the polls Tuesday.
But with less than 24 hours until Election Day polls start to open across the country, here are three big takeaways from what we know about those who decided to vote ahead of November 5 courtesy of CNN.
Across the country, far fewer voters chose to vote ahead of Election Day this year compared with the pandemic-era 2020 election.
Four years ago, more than 110 million Americans voted early in person or by mail – roughly 70% of everyone who voted in that election.
We won’t know the final total number of 2024 voters for weeks, until all results are fully counted, but pre-election voting is expected to make up closer to 50% of all ballots – a split in the electorate that is more similar to the 2022 midterms.
While overall pre-election voting is down, in some states more voters chose to vote in person early than they did in 2020.
The key states of North Carolina and Georgia both saw record numbers of voters participate in early in-person voting, with the totals in Georgia exceeding the numbers from 2020. The total pre-election voting in North Carolina, however, was still lower than four years ago due to significantly fewer people choosing to vote by mail.
Mail voting was an especially popular option during the pandemic as voters chose to avoid crowds at in-person polling places. However, in both states, it’s also harder to vote by mail now than it was four years ago.
Republicans have made up more of the pre-election vote than they did in 2020. The Trump campaign made more of an effort this year to encourage Republicans to vote early and by mail, a major shift from messaging against pre-election voting in 2020.
Across the 27 states for which Catalist has comparable data, registered Democrats have cast 37% of pre-election ballots, while registered Republicans have cast 35%. That’s a significant tightening in the partisan gap since 2020, when, at the same point and in the same states, registered Democrats held a 12-percentage point lead – 42% to 30%.
In four of the seven key states that will likely decide the presidential election, voters register by party, and in every one of them, Republicans have made up a larger share of the pre-election vote than they did at the same time four years ago. Democrats in these states have overall decreased their share compared with 2020.
In Arizona, 41% of pre-election voters have been Republican, a 4-point increase from 2020. Democrats have made up a share that’s 3 points less than it was four years ago, at 33%.
Nevada Republicans have increased their share by only 1 point from 2020 to 37%, while Democrats there have seen their share decrease compared with four years ago, from 38% at this point in 2020 to 34% now.
In North Carolina, where Trump rallied with supporters of the final day of his campaign, Republicans have accounted for 33% of the pre-election vote, compared with 31% in 2020. Democrats have accounted for 32%, down 3 points from their share four years ago.
And in critical Pennsylvania, Republicans have made up 33% of the pre-election vote, a whole 10 points more than in 2020, while Democrats have made up 56% – down 10 points.
Despite Republicans making up a larger share of pre-election voters so far compared with four years ago, recent CNN polling has generally shown Vice President Kamala Harris leading among voters who have already cast their ballots, including in all of the battleground states, besides Nevada.
In the seven most competitive states, the gender gap looks similar to the 2020 and 2022 early vote.
Overall, roughly 1.8 million more women than men have voted early in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to Catalist’s data. However, that gap is narrower than it was at the same point four years ago. That’s both because fewer people have voted early overall, but also because the percentage gap is slightly narrower.
Georgia has the most pronounced gender gap – women have cast 56% of the early vote in the Peach State, while 44% has been cast by men. In Arizona, 52% of the early vote was cast by women while 46% was cast by men. And in North Carolina, 56% of the early vote was cast by women to 44% for men.
Nevada had the closest gender gap – 51% of the early vote was cast by women compared with 47% by men.
In Pennsylvania, arguably the state that could decide the race, women have made up 56% of the early voters. At the same in 2022 and 2020, women had made up 57% of pre-election ballots cast.
Today is the day we will see the results of all of these early voters. Maybe?
Tony
Britain’s Member of Parliament Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the Conservative Party. (AP.)
Dear Commons Community,
The first Black woman to lead a major U.K. political party, Kemi Badenoch, is an upbeat and outspoken libertarian who thinks the British state is broken — and that she’s the one to fix it with smaller government and radical new ideas.
The new leader of Britain’s right-of-center Conservative Party was born Olukemi Adegoke in London in 1980 to well-off Nigerian parents — a doctor and an academic — and spent much of her childhood in the West African country.
She has said that the experience of Nigeria’s economic and social upheavals shaped her political outlook. As reported by The Associated Press and the BBC.
“I grew up somewhere where the lights didn’t come on, where we ran out of fuel frequently despite being an oil-producing country,” Badenoch told the BBC last week.
“I don’t take what we have in this country for granted,” she said. “I meet a lot of people who assume that things are good here because things are good here and they always will be. They don’t realize just how much work and sacrifice was required in order to get that.”
Returning to the U.K. aged 16 during a period of turmoil in Nigeria, she worked part-time at McDonalds while completing school, then studied computer systems engineering at the University of Sussex. She later got a law degree and worked in financial services.
In 2012, she married banker Hamish Badenoch, with whom she has three children.
She was elected to the London Assembly in 2015 and to Parliament in 2017. She held a series of government posts in the 2019-22 government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, before becoming part of a mass ministerial exodus in July 2022 over a series of ethics scandals that triggered Johnson’s downfall.
Badenoch ran unsuccessfully to succeed Johnson, boosting her profile in the process. She was appointed trade secretary in the 49-day government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and business secretary under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
She held onto her seat in Parliament in July’s national election, which saw the Labour Party win a huge majority and the Conservatives reduced to 121 lawmakers in the 650-seat House of Commons.
Like many Conservatives, Badenoch idolizes Margaret Thatcher, the party’s first female leader, who transformed Britain with her free-market policies in the 1980s. Citing her engineering background as evidence she’s a problem-solver, she depicts herself as a disruptor, arguing for a low-tax, free-market economy and pledging to “rewire, reboot and reprogram” the British state.
A critic of multiculturalism and self-proclaimed enemy of wokeness, Badenoch is an opponent of “identity politics,” gender-neutral bathrooms and government plans to reduce U.K. carbon emissions.
Supporters think her charismatic, outspoken style is just what the Conservative Party needs to come back from its worst-ever election defeat. During her leadership campaign, her backers wore T-shirts urging: “Be more Kemi.”
Critics say Badenoch has clashed with colleagues and civil servants and has a tendency to make rash statements and provoke unnecessary fights. During the leadership campaign she drew criticism for saying that “not all cultures are equally valid,” and for suggesting that maternity pay was excessive — though she later backtracked on that claim.
“I do speak my mind,” she told the BBC. “And I tell the truth.”
Conservative politics in the U.K. should be interesting with Badenoch at the helm!
Tony
Bill Clinton speaks at a campaign rally in Durham, North Carolina, on October 17, 2024. – Steve Helber/AP
Dear Commons Community,
CNN had an exclusive interview with former President Bill Clinton about his concerns for the future of American democracy regardless of who is elected president tomorrow. Here is an excerpt.
“Rumbling down the road between small towns in western Michigan, Bill Clinton was considering mortality – potentially American democracy’s or the Democratic Party’s, but also his own.
The nation’s 42nd president believes Kamala Harris will win and that the economy will “explode” over the next few years, thanks to decisions that Joe Biden made, which Clinton says people will finally start to feel after an inevitable lag. He calls Harris a problem-solver, goes in deep on how her price gouging plan could bring down the cost of groceries and how the intricacies of her proposal to have the federal government build more housing is an idea he’d never thought of.
He still throws in Arkansas-spun laugh lines, like Donald Trump “spreads blame like a John Deere spreads manure” or a favorite bit he has about how the Republican nominee would take credit for this unseasonably sunny weather in the final campaign stretch but would blame Biden if it rained.
But speaking to CNN exclusively on his campaign bus – his only interview since starting what has become a marathon schedule that still has last-minute stops being added – Clinton said he also worries about what Trump’s impact on politics means for what comes next, no matter who wins.
“What has surprised so many people – although I’m sure this happened in the ‘30s throughout Europe, when they were considering things with fascism – a lot of people just can’t believe how many voters in America agree that he doesn’t make sense, agree that he’s advocating things that would be bad, but somehow think that if the experience was good for them back then, it was magically his doing and everything was fine,” Clinton said. “So, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Clinton campaigned 30 years ago on being a bridge to the 21st century. He knows that viciousness, division and the feeling of being constantly pummeled from every direction by politics were not what America had been expecting on the other side.
He was the one who tapped into the White working-class vote back then to break through the political establishment, and then signed trade agreements and banking laws that created the job losses and resentment that has transformed American politics. His wife was the one whose loss put Trump in the White House, in a way that burns him still.
Now after spending the past few years celebrating 25th anniversaries of achievements such as the Good Friday agreement, as he’s seen his own time in office bear out, the second youngest elected president ever is talking about securing his grandkids’ future and holding up his big hands to show the joint problems and essential tremor that he says will keep him from hitting a 300-yard drive again.
Over nearly three weeks straight of 10-hour days – which means he’s had a much more active schedule than Harris, Trump, Tim Walz, JD Vance, Joe Biden or Barack Obama – Clinton is adamant in his speeches about his unique perspective as the only person on the planet who’s done the job and personally knows both candidates on the ballot Tuesday.
“You did pretty well when I was president, and I think I’m entitled to my opinion about who would be better,” he often says, his soft Southern accent now with a permanent rasp.
Standing in a church gym in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, he recounted a bit that he had read a few years ago about Dwight Eisenhower saying he worried how much longer the oldest continuous democracy could survive with all the effort it takes.
“I think we ought to say to President Eisenhower, ‘We don’t know how long we’re going to make it either, but we’re fixing to lengthen our stay in the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Clinton said.
Hours later, relaxed in a chair on a bright blue Harris-Walz bus, he considered what Obama, Biden, Walz and others have meant when they say that America might not survive another four years of Trump.
“I think you have to look at what the definition of ‘survive’ is,” Clinton said. “You can put me on a breathing tube tonight, but it wouldn’t be surviving like I’m surviving now. And the same thing’s true in politics. I don’t know if we can survive or not – I think it would be a travesty if he became president again.”
Amen!
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
The New York Times editorial yesterday was entitled, Vote to End the Trump Era. The electronic version lists twenty-six reasons (see summary below with links to details) why we should not vote for Trump. Its concluding comment:
“It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump.”
I could not concur more.
Vote Tuesday for Kamala Harris.
Tony
The New York Times
Editorial
Vote to End the Trump Era
You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.
Dear Commons Community,
A highly respected Des Moines Register poll showed Harris leading Trump 47% to 44%. It is an outlier compared to other polling results in the state. As reported by the Des Moines Register and The Huffington Post.
Vice President Kamala Harris has a narrow edge over Donald Trump in the final Des Moines Register poll of Iowa, a shocking result showing her with a lead in a state expected to be firmly in Trump’s corner.
The poll, sponsored by the Des Moines Register and conducted by J. Ann Selzer, nailed the final results of the presidential race in Iowa in both 2016 and 2020. While Iowa is no longer considered a swing state and rewards only six electoral voters, the Register survey remains closely watched as an indicator of how white voters across the Midwest may vote.
The poll found Harris earning 47% of the vote to 44% for Trump.
“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” Selzer told the newspaper. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.”
Selzer and the Register surveyed 808 likely Iowa voters from Oct. 28 to Oct. 31. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
Harris’ lead in the poll is the result of a massive gender gap. She leads by 20 points among women, 56% to 36%. Trump has a lead among men, but it’s relatively smaller, 52% to 38%. It’s a pattern that’s repeated itself to varying extents nationwide, but notably, a six-week abortion ban went into effect in Iowa this summer.
While the poll is highly respected, it is also an outlier. Iowa has seen little polling so far this cycle, but an Emerson College survey released Saturday showed Trump with a 53% to 43% lead, and a September poll from Cygnal sponsored by a conservative group found Trump with a 51% to 43% lead.
The last iteration of the Des Moines Register poll, from September, found Trump leading Harris, 47% to 43%.
Selzer’s track record in Iowa is nearly spotless, with only a miss in the 2018 gubernatorial contest. She nailed the GOP’s margin of victory in the 2022 Senate race, the 2020 presidential race, 2016 presidential race and 2014 Senate race and the margin of President Barack Obama’s victory in the state in 2012. Often, her results broke from the polling consensus and turned out to be correct.
This would be quite an upset!
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Daylight saving time ended at 2 a.m. local time Sunday, which means you should have set your clock back an hour before you went to bed. Standard time will last until March 9 when we will again “spring forward” with the return of daylight saving time.
That spring time change can be tougher on your body. Darker mornings and lighter evenings can knock your internal body clock out of whack, making it harder to fall asleep on time for weeks or longer. Studies have even found an uptick in heart attacks and strokes right after the March time change.
“Fall back” should be easier. But it still may take a while to adjust your sleep habits, not to mention the downsides of leaving work in the dark or trying to exercise while there’s still enough light. Some people with seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression usually linked to the shorter days and less sunlight of fall and winter, may struggle, too.
Some health groups, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have said it’s time to do away with time switches and that sticking with standard time aligns better with the sun — and human biology.
I was up at 2:30 A.M.
Tony
Getty Images.
Dear Commons Community,
A growing number of wealthy Americans are considering leaving the country in the run-up to Tuesday’s presidential election, with many fearing political and social unrest regardless of who wins, according to immigration attorneys. As reported by NBC News and CNBC.
Attorneys and advisors to family offices and high-net-worth families said they’re seeing record demand from clients looking for second passports or long-term residencies abroad. While talk of moving overseas after an election is common, wealth advisors said this time many of the wealthy are already taking action.
“We’ve never seen demand like we see now,” said Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley & Partners, which advises the wealthy on international migration.
Volek said that for the first time, wealthy Americans are far and away the company’s largest client base, accounting for 20% of its business, or more than any other nationality. He said the number of Americans making plans to move abroad is up at least 30% over last year.
David Lesperance, managing partner of Lesperance and Associates, the international tax and immigration firm, said the number of Americans hiring him for possible moves overseas has roughly tripled over last year.
A survey by Arton Capital, which advises the wealthy on immigration programs, found that 53% of American millionaires say they’re more likely to leave the U.S. after the election, no matter who wins. Younger millionaires were the most likely to leave, with 64% of millionaires between 18 and 29 saying they were “very interested” in seeking so-called golden visas through a residency-by-investment program overseas.
Granted, the interest in second passports or residencies has been rising steadily among the American rich since Covid-19. Whether it’s retiring to a warmer, cheaper country or being closer to family abroad, the wealthy have plenty of nonpolitical reasons to want to venture overseas.
The ultra-wealthy also increasingly see citizenship in one country as a concentrated personal and financial risk. Just as they diversify their investments, they’re now creating “passport portfolios” to hedge their country risk. Others want a non-U.S. passport in case they’re traveling to dangerous countries or regions hostile to the U.S.
Yet the elections and the political climate have accelerated and added to the push by wealthy Americans to consider a Plan B abroad. Lesperance said that for more than three decades, his American clients were mainly interested in moving overseas for tax reasons. Now, it’s politics and fear of violence, with next week’s election turbocharging those fears.
“For some of them, the primary thing is ‘I don’t want to live in a MAGA America,‘” Lesperance said. Others are worried about violence if Donald Trump loses, or Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to tax unrealized capital gains for those worth more than $100 million. While tax analysts say the unrealized gains plan has little chance of passing Congress, even with a Democratic majority, Lesperance said it’s still a risk.
“Even if there is only a 3% chance that it happens, you still want to take out insurance,” he said.
Attorneys say the wealthy also cite mass school shootings, the potential for political violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia and the government’s soaring debts as reasons to leave.
When it comes to destinations, Americans are looking mainly to Europe. According to Henley, the top countries for Americans looking for residency or second citizenships include Portugal, Malta, Greece, Spain and Antigua. Italy has also become popular for Americans.
“The love affair between Americans and Europe has been going on for very long time,” said Armand Arton, of Arton Capital. “It comes with a price, and they are totally fine investing couple hundred thousand dollars or a half million into a property or a fund.”
The rules and costs, however, are changing fast. While mass immigration has become a hot-button political issue across the world, some politicians in Europe have started to push back against golden visas that give the wealthy citizenship or residency purely based on investments.
Portugal, for instance, faced a backlash after a flood of foreigners poured in the Algarve and bought beach properties as part of the golden visa program. With property prices soaring by 15%, the government changed the rules, increasing minimum investment thresholds and removing residential property as an investment category.
Italy this summer doubled its flat tax on the overseas incomes of wealthy foreigners who transfer their tax residency to Italy, to 200,000 euros ($217,000). The change followed a wave of wealthy new migrants who came for the program and drove up Milan property prices.
For now, Malta remains the go-to second passport for the American rich. While expensive, at about $1 million to $1.2 million all-in, Malta’s investment citizenship program offers citizenship and unrestricted travel and residency in Malta and by extension the European Union, according to immigration attorneys. The EU has been challenging the Malta program in court, but most immigration attorneys expect the country to prevail.
The Caribbean is increasingly popular for Americans who simply want a second passport. Buying an approved piece of real estate in Antigua and Barbuda for more than $300,000 puts you on a path for citizenship, which allows freedom to travel to Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, the U.K. and Europe, among other countries. St. Lucia is also increasingly popular, attorneys say.
Americans with ancestry in Ireland, Italy and dozens of other countries can apply for so-called lineage citizenship, which is typically far cheaper than an investment visa. Some countries, like Portugal, also offer retirement visas, which allow entry and a path to citizenship.
Don’t expect to get any citizenship or residencies right away. With attorneys and countries inundated with so many applications, and so many different background checks and approvals required, the process can take months or even a year or more. And that waiting list could grow longer depending on the election results.
“It’s getting crowded,” Lesperance said. “And I’m sure I’m going to get a bunch more on Nov. 6 or 7.”
I don’t want to live in a MAGA America either but I would be happy living in a Kamala America. I am staying put!
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
The Economist announced Thursday that it is backing Vice President Harris over Trump in the upcoming election, now less than a week away.
“While some newspapers refused to back a presidential candidate this year, today The Economist is endorsing Kamala Harris,” Economist editors wrote in the endorsement published early Thursday. “Tens of millions of Americans will vote for Mr. Trump next week. Some will be true believers. But many will take a calculated risk that in office his worst instincts would be constrained.”
The writers added later that if Trump were to win election, “Americans would be gambling with the economy, the rule of law and international peace.”
The announcement comes amid controversy over major publications like USA Today and The Washington Post, which decided not to endorse a presidential candidate this campaign cycle. The Post reportedly lost more than 200,000 digital subscribers in light of its decision, according to NPR.
“Harris’s shortcomings, by contrast, are ordinary. And none of them are disqualifying,” The Economist endorsement reads. “If The Economist had a vote, we would cast it for her.”
The Democratic nominee has also received endorsements from the New York Times, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Las Vegas Sun, the New Yorker and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Trump has received backing from the New York Post.
The Economist was also one of a handful that pressed President Biden to step aside from the race following his disastrous debate performance against Trump earlier this year.
This is a significant endorsement in that The Economist leans right politically and its endorsement undermines Trump claims that he would be better for the economy.
Tony
Courtesy of The Seattle Times.
Dear Commons Community,
Michael Hiltzik, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, had a piece yesterday entitled “Here are the billionaires in thrall to Trump, and why.” It is an excellent look at the the movers and shakers supporting Trump with major donations. Below is the entire column..
Tony
———————————————–
They’re hedge fund operators, cryptocurrency and AI promoters, scions of and heirs to family fortunes, and others who have it all and want to keep it all. They’re the billionaires who have lined up to support Donald Trump’s reelection campaign with tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions, in donations.
The eye-catching torrent of cash has made the role of America’s billionaires in the electoral system, and their sedulous backing of Trump, a front-burner political issue especially among progressive commentators.
The American Prospect, a progressive website, titled its analysis of tech entrepreneur support for Trump “Valley of the Shadow.” It focused much of its coverage on contributions by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, partners in the Silicon Valley venture investing firm a16z, citing a July podcast in which they wrung their hands over then-Democratic candidate Biden’s technology policies.
“The future of our business, the future of new technology, the future of America is literally at stake,” Horowitz said. “For little tech [whatever that is], Donald Trump is actually the right choice.”
That’s a clue to the fundamentally transactional nature of billionaires’ electoral investments. Many are voting their pocketbooks, enticed by Trump’s record of providing tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation for corporations and promising more of the same in a second term — Trump’s open threats to the democratic model be damned.
As the veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse observed on Slate.com, “They’re far more concerned about slashing taxes and regulations than about the risks of electing a demagogue who hails Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, as a model.”
Some may wish to curry favor with Trump, or fear his retribution if they don’t support him. Backers with interests in the crypto and AI industries such as Andreessen and Horowitz are irked at the Biden administration’s regulatory campaigns. Indeed, the official GOP platform for 2024 bowed to those sectors directly.
“Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown,” it read, replicating Trump’s diction. “We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control. … We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.”
They’re not alone among Silicon Valley investors backing Trump. As my colleagues Wendy Lee, Laura J. Nelson and Hannah Wiley reported, Trump attended a fundraiser in June at venture capitalist David Sacks’ San Francisco mansion that raised $12 million. It was Trump’s first visit to the city in at least a decade.
There can be no question that the financial weight of America’s billionaire class has landed on the side of Trump and his fellow Republicans. Of the top 25 individual donors in the current election cycle, 18 have given exclusively or chiefly to Republicans, according to a compilation by Open Secrets of campaign disclosures.
The largest single donor, Timothy Mellon, had given $165 million to Republicans through Aug. 21. An heir to the family of Andrew Mellon, the plutocrat who served as Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, and the source of millions of donations to right-wing causes over the years, Timothy Mellon has given $125 million to the Trump super-PAC Make America Great Again, including $50 million on May 31, the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in connection with the payment of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
The top-ranked donors who have concentrated their funds on Democrats, according to data released by the Federal Election Commission as of Oct. 17, are former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($42.2 million), LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman ($25.9 million) and the late hedge fund operator and philanthropist James H. Simon and his wife, Marilyn. Andreessen and Horowitz have also contributed to Democrats, though their donations are heavily skewed toward Republicans, who have received $8.6 million combined from the two investors, versus $3.1 million for Democrats.
Almost all the donors on the full list are billionaires or near-billionaires. That underscores a major issue in the American economy: its extreme inequality. As I’ve pointed out before, the Founding Fathers themselves considered the accumulation of dynastic wealth to be a threat to the pursuit of happiness and to democracy itself.
“Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in October 1785, “it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.”
Madison in 1792 viewed the duty of political parties as acting to combat “the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches.” Benjamin Franklin urged the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, albeit unsuccessfully, to declare that “the state has the right to discourage large concentrations of property as a danger to the happiness of mankind.”
Combined with the infamous 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which eliminated constraints on corporate political donations, and the consequence are clear: the domination of American election campaigns by big-money donors, who have come to use their wealth to pressure political leaders to enact policies they favor, then exploit those policies to build up their wealth.
One idea that has many rich Americans exercised is the possibility of a wealth tax. Liberal politicians such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have proposed such a levy, either by raising income tax rates on the richest, or taxing unrealized capital gains; under current law, capital gains aren’t taxed until they’re sold, which allows wealthy investors to defer taxes on those gains indefinitely, even permanently.
The equivalent of a wealth tax was proposed by the Biden administration in a policy statement that was endorsed by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, but the chance of such a thing being proposed by Trump is plainly nil.
The billionaire who has attracted the most attention as the election draws to a close is Elon Musk, the owner of the spacecraft company SpaceX and controlling shareholder of EV-maker Tesla.
Musk has placed himself front and center among Trump’s monied supporters. He ranks sixth among the top political donors, all of whom are Republican supporters. He appeared onstage with Trump at the latter’s recent rally in Butler, Pa. Open Secrets reports that he has donated more than $118 million to America PAC, a fund-raising entity devoted exclusively to Trump, which he founded.
Musk’s interest in Trump’s reelection may be multifaceted. He has groused relentlessly about regulatory actions against him and his companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Aviation Administration, the National Labor Relations Board and others. His political statements have aligned more openly with the right wing.
He has railed against “illegal immigration,” for example — including asserting falsely in a tweet on X, his social media platform, that the Biden administration’s policy is “very simple: 1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible. 2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority — a one-party state.” This reflects a fantasy common on the extreme right that Democrats intend to turn undocumented immigrants into a pro-Democratic voting bloc.
Among the high-profile billionaires who have drawn scrutiny for choosing not to take a sides in this contentious presidential election cycle are the owners of two of the nation’s most influential newspapers: The Times, owned by Los Angeles biotechnology entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong; and the Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. With only weeks to go before election day, both newspapers declined to endorse either candidate in the presidential race at the behest of their owners.
It has been openly speculated that both owners were concerned about Trump’s potential influence on their business prospects — Soon-Shiong’s research output could be subject to Food and Drug Administration regulation, and Bezos’ Amazon retail operation and Blue Origin space exploration venture are government contractors.
As my colleague James Rainey reported, Soon-Shiong said that he feared that picking one candidate would only exacerbate the already deep divisions in the country. “I have no regrets whatsoever,” he said in an interview with The Times last week. “In fact, I think it was exactly the right decision. … The process was [to decide]: how do we actually best inform our readers? And there could be nobody better than us who try to sift the facts from fiction” while leaving it to readers to make their own final decision.”
Soon-Shiong also said that he considered himself a political independent, adding that, despite speculation, his stand is not based on any singular issue or intended to favor either of the major party candidates.
Bezos has felt the sting of Trumpian retribution directly. Trump has been plainly irked by the Bezos-owned Post’s endorsements of his Democratic opponents Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, as well as its forthright coverage of his presidential policies.
In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon blamed its loss of a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft on “improper pressure” by Trump, who was determined “to harm his perceived political enemy — Jeffrey P. Bezos.” A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2021. The day that Bezos’ Washington Post announced that it would not endorse either presidential candidate, Trump met with the CEO of Blue Origin in what seemed, if superficially, to be an auspicious sign for the company’s destiny in a Trump administration.
The billionaires’ dollars flowing into the Trump campaign tends to reflect the source of the donors’ wealth. Among the top Republican donors are hedge fund operators and investment bankers; natural resource magnates; and others with specific concerns about federal policies that might affect their enterprises.
Billionaire Jeff Yass, for instance, has become the fifth-largest donor in this cycle, with $84.6 million funneled to Trump and other Republicans. That cash infusion may have influenced Trump to reverse his policy position on TikTok, the social media platform in which Yass holds a substantial stake, from trying to ban the Chinese-owned platform during his presidency to advocating for its preservation.
None of this means that Democratic donors are above advocating for their own interests in a Harris administration. Several, including Hoffman and Mark Cuban, have been pressuring Harris to fire the aggressive antitrust advocate Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission if Harris wins the election. Harris hasn’t commented.
In any case, the numbers tell the story of the 2024 election: Money is talking, and loudly.
