Oligarchy is on the Ballot

Donald Trump has urged voters to pretend that he’s on the ballot in the midterm elections. Given his historic unpopularity, his opponents can only hope that people take his advice. And the polls, which show Republicans almost certain to lose the House and likely to lose the Senate, suggest that Democrats are getting their wish.

Voters should also know, however, that Trump isn’t alone in de facto being on the ballot. America’s oligarchs — a tiny group of almost inconceivably wealthy people — also have a huge stake in this election. The Democratic Party isn’t ideologically monolithic, but it’s basically a center-left party that will be much less favorable to plutocrats than the G.O.P. And because they rushed to prostrate themselves at Trump’s feet after the 2024 election, many of the oligarchs may find themselves personally in the crosshairs if a Democratic Congress begins serious hearings on Trumpian corruption.

Fearing this outcome, the oligarchs have been pouring money into the midterm elections, in an all-out effort to limit the size of the blue wave. The New York Times reports that just 20 donors — roughly 0.00001 percent of adults, i.e. one ten-millionth of the population — have already pumped about $2 billion into this election, or about 15 percent of total campaign spending.

These donors are overwhelmingly supporting Republicans. Here’s a graphical representation of the megadonors and their contributions:

Although the Times separates out the crypto/gambling segment, it’s a good bet that most of their support is going to right-wing candidates.

How did such a small group — which happens to include some truly terrible people — gain so much power? Part of the answer is that the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens’ United decision opened the floodgates for vast sums of money to flow into politics. The larger part of the answer is that the vast power of the extremely wealthy stems from the vast concentration of wealth in their hands, which is literally more than an order of magnitude greater than their share of wealth a few decades ago. Here is Realtime inequality’s estimate of the share of total wealth held by the top 0.00001% of the population, roughly corresponding to the megadonor class:

In 1913 Woodrow Wilson wrote,

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own.

There’s a lot to criticize about Wilson, but he was right about that. And now we once again have men big enough to own the government of the United States. This midterm is a test of whether they will get away with it.

Vote.

MUSICAL CODA

The lyrics capture my feelings on election eve.