Anti-billionaire Organization is Endorsing a Billionaire.
Make It Make Sense
An anti-billionaire organization is endorsing a billionaire, and I don’t know how you’re supposed to take that seriously without calling it exactly what it is. Hypocrisy!
Our Revolution, the group built by Bernie Sanders around fighting the billionaire class and getting money out of politics, just endorsed Tom Steyer, a billionaire who is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money into a race. That’s the exact behavior they’ve spent years saying is the problem.
And what makes it worse is that they don’t even try to reconcile it in a serious way. The justification is that he is “upsetting the system” and that he has the best chance to stop Republicans. But if you actually think about that for more than a second, it falls apart. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence an election is not upsetting the system, it is the system. It’s the very thing they claim to be fighting against, just now it’s happening in a way that benefits them.
This IS the Pattern
What bothers me about this is not just the decision is that we have seen this movie before.
The Democratic Party sets these very clear moral positions, they build messaging around them, they rally people around them, and then the second those positions get in the way of winning, they abandon them.
You see it over and over again.
They talk about protecting democracy and then avoid real primary competition when it becomes inconvenient.
They talk about banning stock trading in Congress, and then you have situations like Ro Khanna pushing a ban while his household is actively trading millions of dollars.
They talk about getting money out of politics, and then justify massive spending when it’s on their side.
And every time, the explanation is the same. They’ll tell you they have to win. That the stakes are too high. That this is different. That this is necessary. But it completely undermines everything they were saying before.
Do they think we are dumb?
The “Good Billionaire” Problem
What this really exposes is the idea that there are good billionaires and bad billionaires, depending on who they support.
The bad billionaires are the oligarchs, the corrupting influence, the people buying elections.
But the good billionaires are the ones that are doing the exact same thing but for our side.
You see names like Steyer, J. B. Pritzker, George Soros, and Reid Hoffman get treated as exceptions, not because the principle changed, but because it is the blue team.
If your position is that money in politics is corrupting the system, then it doesn’t suddenly become less corrupting because it’s helping your side. Either the principle matters or it doesn’t. You don’t get to redefine it every time the bag is making it rain for your team.
This is the part that I think people are actually reacting to, even if they don’t always articulate it this way.
It’s not just the hypocrisy. It’s the fact that they think nobody notices.
They really think we are dumb.
You can’t spend years telling people that money in politics is the root of the problem, that billionaires are distorting democracy, and then turn around and say this time it’s fine because it helps you win. You can’t say you want ethical standards and then immediately carve out exceptions when it benefits you.
At some point, people stop taking that seriously. Not because they don’t agree with the original goal, but because they don’t believe you actually stand by it.
And that’s where this becomes a bigger problem than just one endorsement. It erodes credibility. It makes everything sound like bullshit.
Stand on Business
At the end of the day, this isn’t about whether you support Steyer or oppose him. It’s about whether the things you say actually mean anything.
If the goal is just to win, then say that. Say you’re going to use whatever tools are available and stop pretending it’s about principle. But if you’re going to take a moral stance, if you’re going to build an entire movement around that stance, then you have to stick to it!
Because right now, we look like fucking dumb hypocrites. And, people are paying attention to that.
Not a surprise the main other candidates include a hispanic man and a woman
I'd posit that it's a commonsense issue at this point. The Dem field is too crowded with a ridiculous number of unknowns, frankly. Looking at polling shows Steyer and Porter the two top polling Dems now that Swalwell has dropped out, and personally, I think Porter did herself some major damage with her on camera surliness and conduct unbecoming in the video that came out on her. Because of the way their voting system works in CA, Dems are fearful that the race could end up with no Dem on the ballot, so I'd guess endorsements are going to be somewhat based on 'best bets'. Under the current scourge at the national level, Dems best chances are to take as many races as they can and it's horribly unsettling to think that an R could govern the state of CA under trump still at the helm especially. I'd suggest that perfect is always the enemy of good, this coming election more so than ever and in part, the steadfast "no billionaires' stand is analogous to the pro Gaza stand that kept too many Dems from voting for Harris - look where that got us. No thanks to a repeat of that outcome. Also, I'd add that the anti-billionaire sentiment maybe needs more nuance as there are definitely decent ones out there, in particular, JB Pritzker who has been an extremely effective Governor in IL and I've seen, heard, and read nothing but very positive assessments of his decency, effectiveness, and 'groundedness' as a human. Automatically rejecting a potentially very good candidate for having too much money is as shortsighted as rejecting one over not having enough money or being the 'wrong' color, gender, ethnicity, etc.