EDIT #1 (2021/07/21, 1327 PST): I have written a follow-up to thoughts I had yesterday, but feel need to be said today in light of what has transpired. They can be found here. In good faith, I also quote them here at the top:
As the diarist with the top trending (and controversial!) story for much of yesterday, I feel an obligation to follow up on what I wrote. I thought about editing my last diary with my thoughts before going to bed, but didn’t, and it’s a little late now, although I will link and quote this there. So this’ll have to do.
Support Kamala Harris!
Now, to actually give my clarifications: when I wrote “The Wealthy Are Not Your Friends”, I noted that based on the talk we were hearing (from Joy Reid) that the donors didn’t want Harris either, and that Biden/Harris was a ticket. That talk was later backed up by AOC and the donors themselves. Having linked that named article, and linked to AOC’s comments, when I wrote “It Was Never About the Debate”, I did not include a section on Harris as I figured it was clear that Harris was “legitimate” to substitute for Biden, as she actually is the Vice President.
It was obviously not clear. That was my failing in writing as quickly as I did. I spent a lot of time in the comments engaging with Kamala Harris supporters who had a sincere desire to see Biden withdraw and for her to take his place, but who clearly disliked the idea of an open convention, and were uncomfortable with the influence the donors wielded over the party. I think that is a legitimate and respectable position which is by and large free from undue donor influence (or at least only as subject to it as any candidate would nominally be).
Now that Joe Biden has withdrawn, and the Democratic Party is closing ranks around endorsing Kamala Harris, I think that is the best position to take in playing the field as it lays. I think it is the legitimate choice that respects the will of those who have voted in the primaries so far.
She has my support going forward. I hope she has yours. I will vote for her in November if she is the nominee, and I hope you will too. (And for whomever is in the place if she is not.) Thanks for reading.
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ORIGINAL POST:
Yesterday, I noted that The Wealthy Are Not Your Friends. It was a pretty good diary according to most of the comments; maybe go read it to fully understand the context for this one, although it isn’t necessary.
Also among the comments was an argument that I have seen repeated many times here on Daily Kos, which boils down to an extension of good faith to the billionaire donor class: the presumption that they are doing what they are doing because they share a similar sense of morality to you and I, and are concerned about the same things that we are.
I don’t feel like quoting the last example of this I saw and putting its author on the spot, so I will instead paraphrase the argument: “The billionaires were so concerned by Joe Biden’s debate performance that they became convinced he would lose to Trump, and that democracy would go with him! That’s why they support replacing him!”
That argument has always transparently been bullshit.
You don’t need to take the word of people like me to see that for yourself. I mean, AOC is out there saying as much too, as two diaries have already covered. Hakeem Jeffries came out to endorse Biden, in opposition to all the made-up media scuttlebutt. Here’s a primer on how J. D. Vance was put together as a political weapon by billionaire Peter Thiel. Bernie Sanders went on Colbert and said the same kind of thing I’ve said:
In a sense, we should thank Musk for making this issue so obvious. What we have in America now is a corrupt political system. That's all. We do not really live in a democracy. You live in a semi-democracy. You have the right to vote. But a billionaire out there has the right to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to further his or her aims. And what Musk has done, and other billionaires are doing, is falling into line behind Trump because they know they're going to get massive tax breaks.
But let’s actually hear the reasons from the billionaire donor class themselves, shall we? Steven Levy at WIRED’s Plaintext sent out an e-mail which included the following:
But if you are billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, apocalypse looms in another form: a proposed tax on unrealized capital gains that affects households worth more than $100 million.
I’ll explain in a second why the cofounders of Silicon Valley’s preeminent VC firm insist that their opposition to this idea isn't totally self-interested, and why their analysis on how it would destroy the country is alarmist twaddle. But it’s significant that in the tone-deaf 90-minute podcast they released this week, they cite this part of Joe Biden’s budget proposal as the “final straw” that led them to support Donald Trump for president. Far from a clinical analysis of the issues that separate the two leading candidates for America’s top job, their take on Biden’s policies actually provides a useful window to explain why certain wealthy Silicon Valley luminaries previously known as Democrats are suddenly leaning Trump. (That list also includes Chamath Palihapitiya, a 2020 Biden donor who recently cohosted a huge fundraiser for the former president.)
[...]
Andreessen and Horowitz do enumerate several points of disagreement with Biden that affected their decision to go Trump. First, they are outraged that the administration is actively policing cryptocurrency and the blockchain, an area where Andreessen-Horowitz has huge investments. Horowitz, with typical hyperbole, calls the regulation lawless and nefarious. Strike two against Biden is the provisions in his executive order that attempt to rein in negative effects of huge artificial intelligence foundation models. But the “final straw,” they say, is a budget proposal that would tax unrealized capital gains at 25 percent, affecting only citizens worth over $100 million. Biden's goal is to prevent some (non)-taxpayers from working it so their investments are never realized, allowing them to endlessly monetize their earnings by borrowing against them.
Well, that all sounds very public-minded and not at all self-interested.
Here’s the Financial Times, no friend of labor or the working class, on how weird tech bro billionaires are about J. D. Vance. But there’s an interesting tidbit near the end that confirms the WIRED article and adds a twist:
As for buying access to the White House: It’s pretty revealing that investor Marc Andreessen and his business partner Ben Horowitz, who just came out for Trump in this podcast, spend a lot of time whingeing about being refused an audience with Biden, whereas they recently had a chance to push their tech policy ideas over dinner with Trump. Andreessen, who historically backed Democrats, says it was a Biden plan to tax billionaires that finally made him defect.
(Say, do you remember how A. G. Sulzberger lost his mind and dedicated the New York Times to destroying Biden all because Biden refused to do an interview with them? Are you sensing a pattern in these personal grievances?) Here’s an Axios article with more on billionaire Andreessen and his grudges.
Here’s The Hill reporting on billionaire Mark Cuban complaining about Biden’s restrictions on cryptocurrency, among other things.
Here’s Fox Business with billionaire Jeff Greene complaining about Biden’s plan for national rent control, among other things.
Here’s The Hollywood Reporter on multimillionaire Ari Emanuel (yes, Rahm’s brother) complaining about Biden, and here’s multimillionaire Ari Emanuel’s own hit piece in The Economist.
Here’s Joe Biden himself saying, “I don’t care what the billionaires think.”
This morning, the Biden/Harris campaign sent out a campaign e-mail entitled, “I am trying to buy your vote” which begins:
Woah, [name]: last night at the Republican convention, Trump literally said, "I am trying to buy your vote."
For once he wasn't lying: Trump's campaign is raking in enormous checks from crypto billionaires, Big Oil executives, and now even Elon Musk himself -- the richest person in the world.
Trump clearly thinks that the American people can be bought, but we'll never stoop to that level.
All emphasis there is original, not mine. I could go on and on and wander off into the weeds on this topic, but I want one thing to be very clear:
IT WAS NEVER ABOUT BIDEN’S DEBATE PERFORMANCE
Maybe it was for you, oh reader mine, if you have ever contemplated the idea of Biden stepping aside, but know with absolute confidence that for the donors that are actually trying to make this decision—and are trying to disenfranchise Democratic primary voters in the process—that it has never been about the debate, or Biden’s mental acuity, or saving democracy, or any of that which you would so dearly love to believe it was.
It has always only ever been about their wallets and bank accounts.
That is a fact. It is indisputable. It is non-negotiable.
So, if you continue to agitate for replacing Biden, know that you are the dupe, the patsy, the stooge, of a bunch of self-serving billionaires who only care about lining their own pockets by having more pliable candidates in said pockets. That is something you will have to live with every time you look at yourself in the mirror: as Mr. T once professed, you have a chance to be somebody or be somebody’s fool, and you chose to put on a big red clown nose and a jester’s cap out of fear.
You have been aiding and abetting a coup of, by, and for the wealthy.
There is still time for you to stop.