Some prominent Democrats are suggesting that the U.S. is becoming an oligarchy or kleptocracy, where billionaires like Elon Musk have the real power and essentially elect presidents after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
Billionaires like Musk do play a role in American politics, but it is far more limited than it appears. For every SpaceX founder who gains breathless news coverage, there’s a host of donors, many of them millionaires and billionaires, who go under the radar. These donors often revel in making their impact more secretively.
The real question, though, isn’t whether the wealthy should support political candidates and causes, but whether the money really “talks,” i.e. translates to election victories.
Thankfully, the evidence on that is rather clear—billionaires like Musk cannot “buy” elections. In fact, when it comes to an election, voters often choose the very candidate who got fewer campaign donations.
Take 2024, for example.
Vice President Kamala Harris may have trouble stringing a sentence together at times, but the Democratic money machine was roaring into high gear behind her earlier this year. According to Open Secrets, Harris’ campaign committee (which took over for President Joe Biden’s, when Biden dropped out of the race) raised just over $1 billion, and spent about $917 million. Outside groups raised $843 million and spent $836 million to support her cause.
Meanwhile, the winning campaign spent less than a third of that amount. Trump’s campaign committee raised $382 million and spent $345 million. Outside groups backing him raised $976 million and spent just over $1 billion.
Don’t get me wrong: Money does make an impact in American politics, it’s just not as directly as critics often suggest.
Donors don’t determine how Americans vote, but they do prop up the causes that often influence Washington, D.C.
As I explain in my forthcoming book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” the Left’s dark money network—nonprofits such as the George Soros-founded Open Society Foundations, nonprofits founded by the for-profit company Arabella Advisors, and purposefully shadowy money groups like the Tides Foundation—props up a system of left-wing nonprofits that staff and advise federal agencies to achieve woke priorities in the administrative state.
Conservative groups also seek to influence Washington, D.C., but a few key considerations differentiate conservative efforts from those of the Left.
First, the administrative state is chock-full of far-left bureaucrats who favor woke priorities out of step with the concerns of most Americans. These bureaucrats are often insulated from the will of the people, and they pursue their leftist pet projects no matter who is in the Oval Office.
Second, when it comes to policy, the Left’s priorities empower bureaucrats, creating a vicious self-reinforcing cycle. Their preferred policies also stymie opportunity and economic growth with the false promises of cheap renewable energy and top-down social equality. The Left promises a panacea of equal outcomes but delivers a bureaucratic stasis, based on handouts to the poor and privilege for the elites who favor their ideas.
The Right, meanwhile, aims to remove red tape and unleash opportunity, challenging the Left’s sacred cows.
Billionaires who actually invent things, such as Musk, increasingly favor the Right. Billionaires who are closely connected with the institutions now dominated by the Left—academia, Hollywood, the legacy media—tend to support the bureaucratic ideology of wokeness.
Musk may be the richest man in the world, but he doesn’t support the status quo. Musk is only one man. According to Forbes’ 400 list, Musk’s $244 billion can easily be outmatched by the fortunes of left-leaning billionaires such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ($197 billion), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ($181 billion), Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett ($150 billion), Google cofounder Larry Page ($136 billion), former Alphabet President Sergey Brin ($130 billion), Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates ($107 billion), and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg ($105 billion).
There are other conservative billionaires besides Musk, but the Tesla founder still represents a maverick going against the grain of his class—not a spokesman for the wealthy.
If money really did talk in American politics, Musk’s voice would be drowned out by the mega-billions of the Left, leveraged through Hollywood, Big Pharma, and the network of Soros.
If America were a kleptocracy, Trump wouldn’t have stood a chance.
