On Saturday, the Democratic National Convention held elections for the new chair, with Minnesota's party leader Ken Martin winning decisively. During his campaign, Martin made a comment that garnered much attention: when asked whether the party should accept contributions from billionaires, Martin replied, "only the good billionaires.” He would, of course, define “good billionaires” as those who support to the Democratic Party. This would actually make many of the current “bad billionaires” who’ve curried favor to Donald Trump — Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, etc. — former “good billionaires,” further highlighting how flawed this logic is.
This comment, and Martin’s subsequent election, perfectly encapsulates the current state of the Democratic Party in the Trump 2.0 era: they are once again unable to meet the moment and frankly seem completely lost. We’re currently staring down the barrel of Trump’s second administration, which promises to be even more cruel, unhinged and corrupt than the first, yet many Democrats seem basically unfazed.
Many have simply bent the knee, either partially or fully capitulating to Trump and Republican framing on several issues. Others seem completely caught off guard, unable to offer any coherent strategy on how to fight back against the many looming threats of this administration, including climate catastrophe, disgustingly inhumane immigration policy, the further enabling of genocide in Gaza and full-scale oligarchic takeover. To focus on that last point, Martin’s statement about billionaires would be moronic in any context, but it is especially so given that our government is currently being seized by a gang of unelected, billionaire robber barons.
An actually competent opposition party (one can only dream) would use this as an opportunity to take a firm stand against all billionaires, not just the ones that bought Trump. They would address corporations who have flooded money into our political system, who use our government to make themselves richer while hanging everyone else out to dry. This message seems to resonate with Americans across the political spectrum, but Democrat leaders refuse to get behind it because that would require a complete overhaul and reconstruction of their own party.
In 2016 and 2020, the Bernie Sanders campaign offered the party a chance to reshape itself into a more left-populist, class-oriented party, harking back to the New Deal era. But party leaders moved heaven and earth to prevent this from happening, as Sanders’s ascension posed an existential threat to party elites and their big-money donors. So, they crushed his movement and continued to push candidates espousing the establishment orthodox of the past 40 years.
In response to decades of bipartisan neoliberal rule, we are living in a fiercely anti-establishment era where people hate the government and politicians, justifiably, because they feel like they do nothing for them. This sentiment manifested in both Sanders and Trump, who put forth drastically different paths for our country. Sanders offered to use the government to tax the wealthy and to empower and strengthen the multiracial working class, while Trump placed the blame on a handful of scapegoats (immigrants, liberal Hollywood elites, trans people and more) whom he vowed to go after. Since Trump’s rightwing pseudo-populism posed no threat to capital, he was able to succeed in his party takeover, setting us on our current disastrous path and ultimately ushering in this new era of Trumpism.
To combat this, we need party leaders and candidates who tap into this righteous outrage at the system, while blaming the correct villains and offering the correct solutions. From what I’ve seen of Martin and other Democratic leaders, I doubt they’re going to make this happen, which means it’s up to us. Over the next four years, we must force the party into a more left-populist working class-oriented direction so that we can effectively fight off oligarchy and make the substantial positive change we desperately need.
It doesn’t take an established political figure to say that there aren’t “good” billionaires and there aren’t “bad” billionaires. There are just billionaires.
