Are Spine Donations Needed for Major Democratic Donors?

Recent statements from major Democratic Party donors that they may withhold donations for the midterms out of frustration at the lack of Democratic legislation should inspire fear and loathing in the hearts of rank-and-file voters.  Likely intended, at least in part, as a way to pressure Democratic legislators to hurry up and pass the massive Build Back Better and bipartisan infrastructure bills, such statements raise troubling questions about these donors’ basic understanding of current American politics.  After all, no close observer of the recent roadblocks to passing both bills could reasonably conclude that the great majority of Democrats aren’t united in passing legislation that would give a significant boost to the economy and social safety net.  Even a cursory review of recent stories — even recent headlines, for Pete’s sake! — would show that two conservative Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema, have been instrumental in stymying a final product through a combination of obfuscation and ad hoc objections.  Punishing the vast majority of Democrats in 2022, rather than, say, mounting a pressure campaign now against this pair of holdout Democrats, is a curious choice that suggests a lack of commitment to the manifold goals that are so closely within reach.

This proposed donor capital strike also betrays a basic misunderstanding of the current stakes of American politics, in which the alternative to Democratic rule is the proven incompetence, malice, and white supremacist authoritarianism of the GOP.  For donors to tacitly suggest it would be better for the Democrats to lose their support and well, lose, in 2022 strangely elides the likely deadlock that would ensue, as well as the momentum this would lend to the possibility of a second Trump presidency in 2024.  If these threats of withholding are true, they speak to a basic failure of values and vision among these financiers and other titans of wealth.  It also suggests a basic failure of logic: after all, with the Democrats so close to passing major legislation, wouldn’t the better play be to pledge to double down on commitments to the Democratic Party, particularly to the progressives who are holding the party’s feet to the fire in getting this legislation passed?  

It’s sickening that the Democrats are to any extent reliant on donors who threaten to take their money and walk at the party’s hour of greatest need for unity and resolve.  Even if simply intended as a motivator for legislative action, it simultaneously sends a message of demoralization to the party’s base voters, while suggesting that the alternative of GOP rule is any way palatable or sane.