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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

To be clear, what you are saying is incredibly disingenuous. The link you give shows that individuals and PACs associated with Bridgewater Associates gave $5,400 to Tom Cotton. That's not in millions or thousands. That's literally $5,400. Tom Cotton raised $17,454,785 in that election cycle.

And keep in mind that isn't even his firm giving the money. Also, giving more than $2,700 to a candidate is illegal anyway, so "financially backing a candidate" is kind of a nonsense standard to hold a person to.

Money in politics is a problem, to be sure, but one that is commonly overstated in this sort of light, and what you are saying here is that he should be giving more money, which is kind of the opposite of what we should be thinking of things.

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Plus people rarely back a candidate for single issues.

It's entirely possible that Ray Dalio has some views on the tax code reform that may not align with mainstream republicans, but that doesn't mean the other 90% of policies the other politician supports align with his views. Or even that the other camp has the same tax reform policies in mind as he does.

I've seen many people who want to reform the tax code, which would involve a greater relative share of taxes for the top end, who wouldn't identify as democrats.

>Plus people rarely back a candidate for single issues.

Tell that to all the black gun owners who vote R because they don't want wake up one day and find out they're felons or all the fiscal conservatives who vote D because they believe healthcare and the climate are bigger short term issues.

I generally agree with you that people back whoever pushes policy they like most but people also have deal-breakers that will cause them to back the other guy even if they don't like his platform.

You do realize that black people don't have to be democrats yet?

I'm perfectly aware of that. Whether the policy crafters at the DNC realize that is a different story. A lot of people seem to take for granted that only whites vote R so I figured there was no harm in challenging that assumption for the point of my example.

I think the point was that any cohort with a strong voting record for one party will still have members that vote for another party based on a single issue.

It's not unreasonable to think that someone might agree with the bulk of a party's platform, but disagree on a single issue that's most important to them and can't bring themselves to vote for anyone in that party because of it.

I can imagine guns, abortion, the military, taxes, etc. might fit that bill as someone's single most important issue.

In particular, the cited page explicitly states:

The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals may include subsidiaries and affiliates.

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