So, now we should do what the moneyed class wants? 🙄 Surely these billionaires have our best interests at heart.
Frankly, yes. But not because we should continue doing what the moneyed class wants, and not that these particular billionaires will continue to have our best interests at heart, but because right now, under this specific circumstance, they are correct. A correct position isn’t negated by any number of other incorrect positions. If my best friend is telling me to lay down on some train tracks and my mortal enemy is saying that I shouldn’t do it…
I hate that this is the mechanism that will probably get it done, but ultimately this is actually a good thing. This helps put us on the road that we need to start heading down. We need to do it quickly.
Its also worth considering that Biden doesn’t get practically any funding from small dollar donors. He’s basically completely dependent on a very specific class of “megadonor”, who can write million dollar+ checks.
If this particular class of donor is saying “drop him” he’s toast. He’s got no other supporters other than billionaire donors and those living in a gaslit fantasy around his viability. I guess they can open up their wallets.
Its also worth considering that Biden doesn’t get practically any funding from small dollar donors. He’s basically completely dependent on a very specific class of “megadonor”, who can write million dollar+ checks.
I’m not saying he hasn’t been fundraising. I’m saying those funds are coming from a relatively small pool of donors. In the previous 8 months Biden’s small dollar funding dried up almost completely.
Where he previously did get something like 40% of his funds from small donors (pre 2024), the last several months has been Biden courting large checks from the few donors capable of writing them.
But Biden’s campaign said the bulk of its funds came from grassroots donors – 96% of its first-quarter donations were under $200. In March alone, 704,000 unique donors made 864,000 contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign.
Unless my sense of time is mega-fucked, March is only four months ago. Do you have any sources to the contrary substantiating your claims on Biden’s small dollar donors drying up?
Keep an eye on the fact that they didn’t put a specific dollar amount like the average size of those small dollar donations. The answer is in this article, you just have to read past the words and do the math.
Lets assume say, $30 a small dollar donation? Thats a pretty typical number that gets thrown around.
864000*.96*$30 == $24,883,200
So call it 25 million?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/14/politics/biden-fundraising-reelection-campaign-president/index.html
Puts it at 72 mil for that quarter, which is like, really good, except that:
25/72 =
34.7%
So if the big money pulls out of Biden as candidate, his fundraising would be relying on solely grass roots, and he would experience a 65% hit in donations.
34.7%
Which is a pretty normal percentage for candidates, and not at all evidence of small dollar donations ‘drying up’.
I don’t think they should be a major influencer on decisions, but can you really argue that they aren’t? This isn’t a story to convince people of the rightness of the cause, it’s a story about major influencing factors turning against Biden staying in, because people don’t think that their voices actually make the decisions as much as theirs do.
Is there a word to describe someone whose cynicism has metastasized?
when the
real votersmean megadonors speak things usually get doneI mean, for Biden that is certainly the case.
He relies entirely on this “class” of megadonor. The calculus would obviously be different with a candidate that is reliant on small dollar donations.
Good quote from the article:
Abigail Disney, daughter of Roy O. Disney, the co-founder of the entertainment giant, told CNBC that she would cut off donations to Democrats entirely until Biden steps aside.
“Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high,” Disney said. “If Biden does not step down, the Democrats will lose. Of that, I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”
I wonder if uhh… Abigail is on lemmy.
