The tech bosses who poured $394.1M into US election
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
> The Democrats, their allied super PACs and other groups raised about $2.9 billion, versus about $1.8 billion for the Republicans
Seems like money in politics isn't really about money in politics. It's all just so exhausting...
“The 2024 presidential election was the second most expensive since at least 1998. In total, $5.5 billion dollars was spent on the race by presidential candidates, political parties and independent interest groups trying to influence federal elections, according to Open Secrets. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $2.2 billion less than the 2020 race, the most expensive on record. When congressional races are factored in, the cost of 2024 campaigns jumps to $15.9 billion.
In 2024, Democrats spent about $6.7 billion, Republicans spent about $7.6 billion, and third-party candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., spent a little more than $500 million. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than 2.5 times as much as any third-party candidate since 2000, when third-party candidates spent nearly $197 million.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/live-update/election-news-2024/...
Though 2020 was an odd benchmark as Michael Bloomberg spent 1 billion on the nomination before dropping out.
Also Trump received 85% unfavorable coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC. In contrast, Harris enjoyed 78% positive coverage from the same networks
How do you quantify that monetarily?
I agree local non presidential politics is more balanced but that's kind of pointless considering reelection rate is around 90%
https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-polit...
I’m not sure negative stores from ABC etc meaningfully hurt Trump any more than FOX etc hurt Harris. Media is so polarized and increasingly online that who shows up to the polls is really the most important factor.
As someone not particularly interested in politics I knew almost nothing about Harris beyond party affiliation. Differentiation is a big deal in primaries but by the general election it’s go Red team go Blue team. Many Republicans I know felt I’d rather have a clown in office than a Democrat, but a votes a vote it doesn’t matter how much you like them as long as you show up.
And if just sending check to each voter might have been more productive.
Most of the spending was concentrated in those states or districts so if spending per vote numbers are meaningful it is probably only so in those states or districts.
Voters in the states that don't matter know their vote for President doesn't matter, and so if there are no close races for Congress or for state and local offices they care about, and no ballot issues they have an opinion on many will stay home, further reducing the utility of nationwide vote totals as an indicator of anything.
can you tell me what was the message from republican party?
The highest bidder was Elon Musk at $242.6 billion, and he won.
But this directly contradicts your previous comment of
>The highest bidder was Elon Musk at $242.6 billion, and he won.
That was a simple correction of a factual error by someone who replied to me: "The higher bidder lost, in this case."
And I think that person was also focusing too much on individual donors and individual election winners.
In this case, the bidders are the donors buying politicians, not the political campaigns trying to influence voters.
This cynicism is demonstrably false: The Democrats and their allied super PACs outspend the Republicans and their super PACs by a billion Dollars, 2.9 billion versus 1.8 billion, a factor of 50%!, and Harris still lost.
Compared to other countries there is though much more money, and focus on raising money, in US elections.
I think you missed the point, which was not about the winner but rather about the choices that we're given as voters. It's not just that the candidates are both "evil" to an extent, forcing us to decide which is lesser of two evils; crucially; they're both beholden to the wealthy class, if not members themselves, and pull in obscene amounts of money for their campaigns.
The reporting on this is highly debatable. SC justices are allowed to have friends, just like any other person.
Jugurtha after leaving Rome and walking away from his bribery scandal.
I think it would be more accurate to say that you need a lot of money to join the small club of electable individuals
The highest bidder was Elon Musk at $242.6 billion, and he won.
In any case, I didn't say the highest bidder, singluar, wins elections. I said that our government is for sale to the highest bidders, plural. In other words, whoever wins is beholden to their wealthy campaign donors. Some faction of the rich always win and implement their policy. The non-wealthy almost never win, regardless of which candidate they favor, even if they elect their favored candidate.
We each get one vote, but when a few of us can spend millions of dollars for special access to and favors from the politicians, that's not democracy.
a) if you were to survey people for a meaning, answers would be all over the place, and many of them with technical untruths
b) if you were to compare the same people's object level claims (over time, when they don't realize there is a test to being conducted) about democracy, you'd find many inconsistencies with both their definition, and with what is actually true
And even funnier: this strange phenomenon, regarding one of the most important phenomena in existence, is basically verboten for serious discussion.
I wonder if this situation is 100% organic, because if I was running a simulated democracy, this is exactly how I'd like to arrange things.
This is what they were pointing out was incorrect, since the highest bidding faction didn't win.
> This is what they were pointing out was incorrect, since the highest bidding faction didn't win.
I don't know why so many commenters are stubbornly refusing to understand a relatively simple point. I didn't say anything about which of the two major political parties will win elections. That varies and shifts with the winds. In any election, though, both of the candidates are for sale. The highest bidders are their wealthy campaign donors. Whichever candidate happens to win is beholden to their wealthy campaign donors and will behave accordingly.
The distinction is between the average, non-wealthy voters and the wealthy donors. The latter are the highest bidders, the former are not. The policies enacted by the winners of elections reflect the desires of the wealthy donors, not the desires of the average voters.
Average voters might make small campaign donations of $100 or less, but it's impersonal and not transactional. Small donors are not in a position to request or demand anything from the politicians. In contrast, the political donations of the wealthy are transactional. They get the ear of the politician, or even a seat at the table. Look at what happened to Musk, who bought his way into becoming the President's best buddy and constant companion.
It is not that people are stubbornly refusing to see it a certain way, against the more obvious interpretation, which you seem to think to be the case, but that you wrote your comment in such a way that the more natural interpretation is the way that people are responding to. Given the number of people that responded to this interpretation, it seems apparent that your intended meaning was not as clearly laid out as you seem to believe.
>I didn't say anything about which of the two major political parties will win elections. In any election, both of the candidates are for sale.
It doesn't matter that you didn't mention this specifically. When people generally think of political elections being for sale, the idea that comes to mind is the more connected candidate winning against the less connected opposition. In this case, what you wrote suggested that the outcome was a result of politics being for sale, which clashed with the reality of how the candidate with more donations actually lost. What you wrote is most naturally interpreted as concerning the election result, not any actions taken afterward, given the context of the article being about contributions towards the election result. Given the article context, if you are actually suggesting that no matter which candidate won, the effectively binary election result would be due to politics being for sale, then it appears that you are really saying nothing by negation, which is why your comment was not interpreted this way.
> Even the Supreme Court justices have been revealed to be on the take, lavished with "gifts" from the wealthy.
This can't possibly be interpreted as a statement about campaign war chests and election outcomes. Supreme Court justices don't take campaign donations or stand for elections against other candidates.
> When people generally think of political elections being for sale, the idea that comes to mind is the more connected candidate winning against the less connected opposition.
My original post didn't say that elections are for sale. It said that our government is for sale. You, in your own mind, made it about election outcomes.
> What you wrote is most naturally interpreted as concerning the election result, not any actions taken afterward, given the context of the article being about contributions towards the election result.
This completely misunderstands the nature of political corruption. As I said already, it's transactional. The wealthy donors aren't simply cheerleaders who are satisfied that their chosen candidate wins. These donors want things in return for their donations. The actions taken by the candidates afterward are essential to the relationship.
It should be noted that a candidate's campaign war chest doesn't consist entirely of donations from the wealthy. There are many small donors. So the question of which candidate has the larger overall campaign war chest is not directly related to the main issue, which is, as I said originally, "The two major political parties are simply competing factions of the upper class." The reason that the wealthy own the politicians, despite not funding their entire campaigns, is that the wealthy can achieve personal, transactional relationships with the politicians, in a way that smaller donors, or mere non-donating voters, cannot. A massive donation of millions of dollars brings the personal attention of the politician to the individual donor.
At the point that they're subverting democratic process (including buying political appointments, in this case), how do you correct that?
It's worth remembering that Silicon Valley's history is inextricably interwoven with the US military. Where once the likes of Facebook, Google or Amazon were upstarts, they are now functionally defense contractors, some more openly than others (eg Palantir).
Americans like to criticize the Chinese control of Chinese Internet companies, including cooperating with the Great Firewall and moving in lockstep to Chinese government policy and messaging (which they do). I hate to break it to you but American Internet companies are doing exactly the same thing.
The real threat of Tiktok was that it doesn't move in lockstep to the US State Department. US tech giants hide behind "algorithms" to manufacture consent [2] (eg by hiding, downranking and/or blocking content relating to Palestine [3]).
People who work in tech generally are more socially progressive. Economics is more of a mixed bag. Most people don't realize pretty much everything is about economics. Big Tech pay lip service to these progressive attitudes by embracing things like Pride Month. Such people might decry the naked politics of Elon Musk, to name one prominent example.
But all this progressivism by Big Tech is purely performative and that's going to be increasingly obvious. You don't see so many of these tech CEOs on this list of political donations but I really wonder what the picture looks like when all the dust settles on PAC donations. I think you'll find there's very little daylight between the politics of any of these CEOs.
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[3]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorship...
There's a very big difference, of course: you have to jump down to #14 in the list[0] before you can even find one.
There is a price to secrecy. You don’t get to use your hard earned reputation. Reputation requires consistency and intellectual honesty. Secrecy enables intellectual dishonesty, but is no match for transparent logic.
In fact, in tech if you remove Elon Musk from the picture that got late to the party, there was an enormous superiority in donations from Google and Meta people. As a leftist press it is, had that superiority remained and had they won like in the last elections, the Guardian would have remained in silence.