The wealthy Democrats who helped pump over $1 billion into Hillary Clintonâs losing effort want answers.
By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI
12/15/16 06:15 PM EST
NEW YORK â When Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine greet the very top fundraisers and donors to their failed campaign at New Yorkâs Plaza Hotel on Thursday evening, many of them will have one question in mind: Whereâs the autopsy?
The call for a deep and detailed accounting of how Clinton lost a race that she and her donors were absolutely certain sheâd win didnât begin immediately after the election â there was too much shock over her defeat by Donald Trump, and overwhelming grief. Her initial conference call with top backers, which came just days after the outcome, focused primarily on FBI Director Jim Comeyâs late campaign-season intervention.
But in the weeks since, the wealthy Democrats who helped pump over $1 billion into Clintonâs losing effort have been urging their local finance staffers, state party officials, and campaign aides to provide a more thorough explanation of what went wrong. With no dispassionate, centralized analysis of how Clinton failed so spectacularly, they insist, how can they be expected to keep contributing to the party?
Column: How Democratic donors benefit financially from climate policy
BY: Matthew Continetti
March 21, 2014 5:00 am
Some lies just wonât go away. In February the Washington Post published an article with the following headline: âWhy Thereâs No Democratic Version of the Koch Brothersâ Organization.â It was the umpteenth attempt to explain, in a particularly simplistic manner, how the millionaires and billionaires who donate money to the Democratic Party are nothing, absolutely nothing, like those meanie cancer research philanthropists Charles and David Koch.
The author, Reid Wilson, interviewed âDemocratic strategists who deal frequently with high-dollar donors,â and these Democratic strategists told him, strategically, that their high-dollar donors are better than Republican ones. âFor the Koch brothers, electing the right candidate can mean a financial windfall,â Wilson wrote. âDemocratic donors revolve more around social issues.â On the one hand you have petty, greedy rich men, and on the other you have committed liberals willing to sacrifice for causes they believe in. The morality play writes itself.
Now, these liberals are not totally selfless, Wilson cautions. They are human beings; they have egos; they seek affirmation. âDonors like being recognized for their philanthropic gestures.â Hedge-fund billionaire and radical environmentalist Tom Steyer, for example, âcooperated with the New Yorker when it wrote a profile of him last year.â Charles and David Koch, though, âdidnât cooperate when the magazine took a look at their political activities,â presumably because âno one needs to send the message that the better-known Koch brothers are there for Republican candidates.â So thatâs why the Kochs didnât talk to Jane Mayer.
Does Reid Wilson believe in Santa Claus? His willingness to suspend disbelief when confronted with the image of a mythic creatureâthe un-self-interested liberalâsuggests as much. The words âlaborâ and âunionâ appear nowhere in his article, despite the fact that unions are 6 of the 10 top all-time donors recently compiled by OpenSecrets.org, despite the fact that unions spent some $4.4 billion on politics between 2005 and 2011. (Incidentally, every member of the OpenSecrets.org top ten either leaned Democratic or split money evenly between the two parties. The Democrats are not hurting for money.)
Unions, their leadership, and their staff see political giving as âan investment,â any non-cross-eyed observer of the political scene would agree, with donations laundered back to the SEIU, AFSCME, NEA, UAW, and others in the form of generous and unsustainable pensions, wage laws benefiting closed shops over free labor, government-mandated dues and contracts, and job protections that make it difficult even for child predators to be fired from schools. Thatâs an ROI the hosts of the Shark Tank would envy.
