I have Harris as more fake than Mayor Pete, but also much more qualified and ready to do the job. I don’t think they’re much different political spectrum/ideology wise.
If it were just those two running for the nomination I’d be indifferent enough that I probably wouldn’t vote in the primary (which is a little bit of a hassle for me since the primary here is only semi-open).
lmao, despite the name calling, thank you for saying what’s actually in my head every time i come across this stuff (here, twitter, reddit, etc). Maybe I’m too nice? Too midwestern? Too pragmatic?
Personally, I choose to believe they donate their $2800 to candidates they like. we all have our reasons for liking candidates. Maybe they like Pete’s manner, or calls for democratic reforms, or his Douglass plan, or his military service, or whatever. Not everything has to be some nefarious conspiracy.
Of course it matters who is donating to candidates. The problem is that the system as currently designed perpetuates the reliance of politicians on big-money donors, therefore politicians will continue to appeal to big-money donors to maintain their funding. The “left” is the side that is against this system (well, clearly not all of us are). Therefore it is relevant to discuss which candidates are the biggest benefactors from big-money donors, as they are potentially the ones with the most to lose if we try to tear that system down.
Do I think it should be the primary factor in deciding who to vote for? No, of course not. But it does help determine who “walks the talk;” it’s more than just ‘commie larping’.
oh, no, I’m totally against the system, and believe elections should be publicly funded and last weeks, not years.
but I also think that’s a separate argument. You have to play the game to win the game.
Also, what are “big money” donors? People who donate the full $2800? If so, by the end of this cycle, I guess I’ll be a big money donor. Or is it just people who are individually named in the FEC filings? If so, I’m already a big money donor, since that cutoff is $200.
I haven’t forgotten you…i know I’ve heard him mention it, but I’ve listened to literally hours of podcasts and interviews, so give me a minute to find a source.
It seems like you’re trying to draw a hard line between “rich individuals that contribute the maximum” and “rich individuals that contribute to PACs” and saying one is OK while the other is not, but I think it’s more nuanced than that (and assume that is cuse’s view as well, who made the original post that PH referred to as ‘commie larping’). Rich individuals contributing the maximum to all candidates is different than them backing an individual candidate based on policies or ideals, and taking a cynical view of this seems appropriate given the system they’re operating in.
Put another way, if you assume an individual’s view on politics is directly opposite to what would be in the best interest of the billionaires, then it is relevant to this individual to know which candidates the billionaires are siding with. There is clearly more to a decision of who to support than this, but it also is clearly not just commie larping.
Yeah it’s nuanced… For example, if the people who donated to Buttigieg also donated to Harris and Booker, I might draw a different conclusion than if they also donated to Warren and Inslee… If one billionaire donated specifically to 2-3 candidates who had similar ideological views, that’d be very different than if one donated to Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Booker, Harris and Castro…
And I don’t think $2800 a year buys you major policy, but I do think it can buy you a few minutes one on one with the candidate, which is enough time to attempt to impact policy. Now, if that time is spent trying to get them to fight harder on LGBTQ rights or the climate or healthcare, I don’t have a problem with it. If it’s spent trying to get them to tax the rich less, or to craft a policy in a way that helps your business, I have a problem with it.
Ultimately, I don’t have a problem with candidates taking donations from billionaires that are subject to individual limits. However, I do think that it’s fair to look twice at the candidates getting the most money from billionaires, because logic would dictate that it’s likely that most of those candidates are going to be the friendliest to billionaires with their policies. Or at least the billionaires seem to think so.
Yeah, and like the super-pac money where they can donate unlimited dark money is a totally different ballgame, but you have to dig that info up, it’s not publicly available.
Along the lines of “what kind of people think this candidate is their best representative” maybe look at the favorability polls and see how they stack up with say people generally who make $100k/year+.
I mean, my few minutes one on one with Pete (the source of my profile pic) cost 1/10th of that, so if $250 is enough to affect policy, well, then, we have a much larger problem. we actually had a conversation about how the Air force is much much much much better than the navy 
, and how he might tackle issues at the VA. If anyone here cares, his answer in the short time i had with him boiled down to reverse the trend toward VA privatization and appoint a director who actually had working knowledge of the VA (as opposed to someone who just wants to get rid of it)
I haven’t read the article so I don’t know what narrative they’re pushing, but in my mind, the fact that they’re billionaires is much more important than the amount of money they’re donating. To become and stay a billionaire, you have to amass and hoard an amount of wealth that the human brain is essentially incapable of quantifying. Which is really freaking weird. The fact that billionaires tend to support certain candidates tells you a lot about those candidates and how the billionaires think they will govern, which should be important information for most of us.
Did he tell you that the Navy has boats AND planes?
And would be in peoples’ best interest to understand who the billionaires actually are and not just lump them all together. I have no real issue with guys like Buffett who understands the tax system needs to be fixed when his secretary or whoever was paying more taxes than him and believes there should be an estate tax. Or you know public enemy #1, and organizer of Latin American caravans, Soros, putting money towards Democratic candidates through insidious loopholes lol.
I’m all for eliminating privately financed campaigns in favor of publicly funded one, but this country is backwards and if billionaires similar to Buffett and Soros want to fund Democratic candidates Idgaf.
It’s certainly commie larping to believe all billionaires are evil and should be lumped together as an amorphous mass.
According to 22, Soros is up to all kinds of evil doings.
I am quite fine with “all billionaires are evil and should be lumped together as an amorphous mass” as the default, and we can include an “until proven otherwise” clause–it’s just that very, very few billionaires actually fall into the ‘proven otherwise’ group, probably few enough that it’s safe to assume it’s an evil, amorphous mass.
I’m not sure that “what about all the benevolent billionaires” is going to take the party to good places.
He did cause a financial crisis to make himself $1 billion so even if he does “good” with that money he’s still an evil billionaire like the rest.
Billionaires being “people” with “the same rights as you and I” is a scorching hot take
so, they aren’t? and they don’t?
I mean, i guess there is precedent in the court of public opinion for taking away that right (lobbyists don’t have it, though no one’s really challenged it in court), but the donation page on actblue would have to get fairly personal.
Let’s just say that if you somehow were completely oblivious to all of the campaigns so far, and someone offered you a bet in which you would be given one piece of data on the candidates and then had to guess which one would have the friendliest tax policy for billionaires, it would be hard to get a better data point than “number of billionaire donors.”
Now, I think/hope Pete is the exception to this, but if you took him off the list the rest of it would be in about the order we would expect, right?