The following article, Kamala’s Cash Crash Causes Democrat Donors Are Hitting the Eject Button, was first published on The Black Sphere.
The Democrats find themselves in a mess of their own making—and what a glorious mess it is. They’ve managed to redefine political self-sabotage, creating a masterpiece of ineptitude that would make even the most bumbling bureaucrat blush. Let’s recap their genius strategy: after Biden’s stumble-filled tenure, they thought the solution was to parachute in Kamala Harris—the candidate nobody wanted. The woman who polled at a whopping one percent in her own party’s primary now carried the banner of “saving democracy.” Irony, thy name is the Democratic Party.
A Billion-Dollar Blunder
Kamala’s campaign wasn’t just a train wreck; it was a bullet train flying off the tracks at full speed. In a compressed timeline, she burned through $1.5 billion. Imagine the fiscal irresponsibility she could achieve with a full campaign cycle. Her penchant for turning campaign funds into Monopoly money is well-documented, but this time she truly outdid herself.
And for what? To lose spectacularly while leaving the Democratic coffers emptier than Hunter Biden’s alibi folder. The MSN article sheds light on this debacle, and it’s a doozy. It turns out that instead of crafting a message to connect with actual voters, the Democrats treated Harris’ campaign like a giant piggy bank for their wealthy consultants, donors, and advisors. Everyone was taking their skim, and Kamala was the unwitting ATM.
The Elite Bubble and the Working-Class Void
Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’ senior advisor, hit the nail on the head when he described the Democrats’ elite bubble. This is a party that loves to talk about the working class but wouldn’t dare let them anywhere near the decision-making table. Instead, they hand the reins to billionaire donors like Reid Hoffman and corporate types like Tony West, Harris’ brother-in-law and Uber’s chief legal officer. Because nothing says “fighting for the little guy” like having billionaires whispering sweet nothings in your campaign’s ear.
Hoffman, Cuban, and their ilk didn’t just fund the campaign—they steered it. According to reports, they watered down policies that might have resonated with actual voters, like a billionaire tax. Their advice? Tone it down. Don’t rock the yacht.
The result? A candidate with no coherent ideological framework, propped up by charisma alone, and a campaign that hemorrhaged money while alienating the very base it claimed to champion.
The Fallout: A Democratic Winter Is Coming
Let’s not sugarcoat it: Kamala’s campaign was a disaster for the Democrats, and the ramifications will echo for years. Their donors are disillusioned, their coffers are depleted, and their credibility is in tatters. The party of “fiscal responsibility for thee but not for me” now faces the grim reality that even its wealthiest backers are questioning their investments. After all, why pour billions into a party that can’t manage a basic campaign, let alone a country? MSN wrote:
According to Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt however, the problems with the Democratic Party’s structure and the way it runs campaigns go beyond just media consultants and the party’s love of paid ads. The core issue, as Shakir puts it, is that the party political operations are a closed loop with well-off consultants, politicians and donors all taking advice from each other with little outside input.
“We have a working-class problem in the Democratic Party and when you have wealthy consultants talking to wealthy donors who are all living in an elite bubble, it can become detached from what messages will resonate with people who aren’t in the elite bubble,” Shakir said. “You can be a good person with good character trying to do the right thing to try and help Kamala Harris win but when you are surrounded by monied interests you have to figure out how you don’t become bubblized.”
(…)
Tobias described a dynamic where campaign staff and candidates are hesitant to publicly push back on the assertions of billionaire donors like Hoffman, even if the campaign doesn’t intend to let them direct policy.
Tobias indicated that the apparent influence of the super-wealthy has a dual effect. It undermines the Democratic Party’s support from its traditional base by steering policy discussions away from economically populist ideas that go against the interest of the wealthy, while simultaneously helping support candidates who are charismatic but don’t come into politics with a consistent ideological framework.
The influence of billionaires was directly early in Harris’ bid for the presidency when moguls like Mark Cuban warned the Harris campaign that a billionaire tax, for example, would be too aggressive, according to the Washington Post. Other business executives, like Tony West, the chief legal officer at Uber and Harris’ brother-in-law, also served as advisors and, according to the Atlantic, helped steer the campaign away from criticism of corporate power.
In Tobias’ opinion, the Democratic Party needs to put forth candidates who either outright turn down business executives with divergent interests from working-class Americans or candidates who will at least force them into a position where they are not influencing policy or the campaign. He says the seats at the table currently occupied by people like West, Cuban and Hoffman should instead be occupied by people that, at the very least, represent popular constituencies, like the president of the AFL-CIO.
The MSN article rightly points out the Democrats’ need to reconnect with their working-class roots. But Democrats haven’t cared about the working class since unions stopped being their ATM. Until they stop treating billionaires as political demigods and start listening to the people they claim to represent, their woes will only deepen.
Trump: The Wild Card
And then there’s Trump. Like a hawk circling a wounded rabbit, he’s watching the Democrats flail with glee. If Trump performs as expected in his second act, the Democrats are staring down not just one or two lost election cycles, but potentially four. A political winter is coming, and the Democrats are woefully unprepared.
They can’t rely on their old tricks anymore. Trump’s ability to expose their hypocrisy—like their claims of defending democracy while coronating Harris—has resonated. The contrast between Trump’s America-first policies and the Democrats’ donor-first priorities couldn’t be starker. And voters are noticing.
Lessons in Leadership (or Lack Thereof)
In the end, Kamala Harris put Democrats in a major pickle for two reasons: (1) she lost, and (2) she spent money like a crackhead who hit the Power Ball.
If there’s one takeaway from this fiasco, it’s that leadership matters. The Democrats bet the farm on Kamala Harris, and it backfired spectacularly. They didn’t just lose; they exposed themselves as a party more interested in appeasing elites than addressing the concerns of everyday Americans.
As Trump gears up for what promises to be a scorched-earth campaign, the Democrats have their work cut out for them. But if their strategy involves more coronations, more billion-dollar blunders, and more catering to the billionaire class, they might want to stock up on blankets. It’s going to be a long, cold winter in the wilderness of irrelevance.
Continue reading Kamala’s Cash Crash Causes Democrat Donors Are Hitting the Eject Button …