In his first term, Donald Trump presided over perhaps the most brazen plutocratic government the United States has ever seen, and in 2016 the president announced his cabinet picks: “I want people who made a fortune!” Forbes later noted that Trump’s cabinet included “17 millionaires, 2 centi-millionaires and 1 billionaire. In total, they are worth 3.2 billion dollars. Just three of them were worth a combined $3 billion: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ($2 billion), Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross ($600 million) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ($400 million).
Trump’s return to the White House will be a repeat of this government of the rich and for the rich. Axios reports that “Trump will fill his top ranks with billionaires, ex-CEOs, tech leaders and loyalists.” Trump’s chief surrogate, Elon Musk, who is often listed as the world’s richest man, is slated to oversee cuts to the federal government. Tax cuts and deregulation are back on the agenda.
It is both easy and accurate to describe Trump as a shameless plutocrat. But that’s only half the story. Trump would not have won the 2024 election if it weren’t for the fact that the Democrats have their own plutocrats — the wealthy donors who sabotaged Kamala Harris’ presidential bid.
Big money has always been the voice of American politics, but the problem has gotten much worse in the neoliberal era that began in the 1970s. Buoyed by the decline of labor unions and court rulings loosening limits on campaign spending, both political parties are becoming increasingly loyal to wealthy donors. The result was particularly disastrous for the Democrats, who became a pale imitation of the Republicans and suffered a steady decline in support from working-class voters.
The Democrats had a real chance to break out of the neoliberal era after the unexpectedly strong support that Bernie Sanders received in 2016 and 2020 — both of his campaigns were almost entirely financed by small donors. Sanders lost the nomination, but his model of politics reborn the Democratic Party. President Joe Biden, who has ruled in close consultation with Sanders on domestic issues, has unveiled the most ambitious government expansion program since the 1960s.
But once Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, big donors saw a chance to start a counter-revolution. A few weeks before Biden’s recall, campaign contributions ran out — and Democrats had to quickly catch up. This left Harris’s campaign vulnerable to the whispers of the party’s moneybags.
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Like Franklin Feuer reported Art AtlanticHarris initially continued to run as an economic populist — a theme Biden has emphasized in trying to salvage his failing political fortunes — but that changed when the campaign began tapping wealthy donors with ties to Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer. (and also Harris’s brother-in-law). “Then quite suddenly that strain of populism disappeared,” Feuer wrote. “To gain the support of CEOs, Harris threw out a strong argument that distracted from one of her weakest issues. Instead, the company promoted Mark Cuban as its top surrogate, the same rich guy it recently attacked.”
This account parallels a New York Times the report since October has documented how Cuban repeatedly blunted and sabotaged the economic populism of the Harris campaign. Cuban boasted that he sent “an endless stream of texts, calls and emails” to her campaign, and “in all of those areas, I saw something come up in her speech on some level.”
In August, Harris said she would fight “overpricing” of products. According to Times“Some of Ms. Harris’s donors have warned campaign advisers against such a ban, arguing that it would lead to counterproductive price controls… (Her) team explained that the plan would only apply in emergency situations and would mirror laws already in place in many states is a narrower concept that won’t immediately address rising food prices… The price hikes tapped into broader anxiety among corporate allies of Ms. Harris, who worried that her economic policies might pander to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.”
Cuban himself boasted: “People are trying to say, ‘Here are the progressive and liberal principles that have always been the principles of the Democratic Party.’ They are no longer there. It’s Kamala Harris’ party now.” In September, Cuban appeared on the CNBC show Squawk Box and flatly rejected a proposed tax on the rich, supported by both Biden and Harris, stating“Every conversation I had said it wasn’t going to happen.”
Harris did convey an economic populist message in ads that ran in swing states. But with Cuban as a key surrogate, voters had little reason to take her populist claims seriously.
The elevation of such a retrograde figure as Cuban was due to the Harris campaign’s desperate courting of Republican voters and Harris’ repeated praise of Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. As a strategy, this preoccupation with anti-Trump Republicans has been a complete failure. Not only did she fail to gain significant Republican support, but she may have helped demobilize the Democratic base by doing nothing to stop the party’s long-term loss of working-class voters.
Harris could have won if she campaigned vigorously against the Trump plutocracy. Instead, she undermined her authority by relying so heavily on donations and advice from her own plutocrats.
We cannot retreat
We now face a second Trump presidency.
There is nothing to lose. We must use our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger to oppose the dangerous policies that Donald Trump is unleashing on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as principled and honest journalists and authors.
Today we are also preparing for the future struggle. It will require a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis and humane resistance. We are faced with the adoption of Project 2025, a far-right Supreme Court, political authoritarianism, rising inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis and conflicts abroad. Nation will expose and propose, develop investigative reporting and act together as a community to preserve hope and opportunity. NationThe work will continue — as it has in good times and bad — to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and in-depth reporting, and to expand solidarity in a divided nation.
Armed with 160 years of courageous independent journalism, our mandate remains the same today as it was when the Abolitionists were founded Nation— to defend the principles of democracy and freedom, to serve as a beacon in the darkest days of resistance, and to see and fight for a bright future.
The day is dark, the forces are building tenaciously, but it’s too late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is just the time when artists go to work. No time for despair, no room for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we make language. This is how civilizations heal.”
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Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, Nation
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