You’re reading Michael Waldman’s weekly newsletter, The Briefing. Click here to get it in your inbox.
Historians will see the 2024 election (if it ever happens) as a time in which political power is seized by the irrationally wealthy.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent over $250 million to elect Donald Trump. He wasn’t alone. Venture capitalist David Sachs, casino owner Miriam Adelson and packaging materials mogul Richard Uihlein all backed Trump with large sums of money.
The wealthy have always invested large sums of money in elections. (George Soros, meet the Koch brothers.) What is unprecedented this time is that they essentially paid for a presidential campaign that was otherwise run by a skeleton staff, and in at least one case So I supported the management.
Much more than many people realize, this distorted political world is a result of the Supreme Court.
Fifteen years ago the following Tuesday, the court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, decided Citizens United v. FEC. In a 5-4 vote, the conservative justices overturned a century of campaign finance laws. This judgment caused great controversy. In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “American democracy is imperfect, but few outside a majority of this court believe that its deficiencies include a lack of corporate funding in politics.” It would be fine,” he wrote. A few days later, in his State of the Union address, Barack Obama rebuked the courteous judges sitting in the front row. According to my lip reading, Justice Samuel Alito blurted out, “That’s not true.”
We now know that the impact of this ruling was greater than expected.
Citizens United does not say that corporations are people. Rather, the law and other cases that extend its logic hold that independent disclosure cannot limit campaign spending. Ultimately, this decision resulted in almost complete deregulation of federal election funding.
Some of the customer churn over the past 15 years reflects the raucous energy of the grassroots. Small-dollar fundraising efforts have become a true democratizing force. However, the growth of small donors has been overwhelmed by the new role of large donors.
According to my colleagues Marina Pino and Julia Fishman, an analysis released today found that “roughly 44 percent ($481 million) of the funds raised to support Trump came from just 10 people. It came from a private donor.”
Back in 2010, I was one of those who worried that Citizens United meant Exxon and other giants would monopolize spending. That didn’t happen. In return, we got a political system dominated by the ultra-rich, unlike anything seen before in American politics.
What about warnings and farce from the court? The common fiction that this spending would be “independent” has completely disappeared. Mr. Trump outsourced much of his campaign work to purportedly independent groups, paid for by Mr. Musk, who traveled with and labored for the candidates.
When it comes to disclosure, much of the money spent in American politics is “dark money,” meaning large sums of money whose donors’ identities are not revealed or hidden behind layers of committees and pseudonyms. Increasingly, the number of donations is increasing.
For more than a century, ever since money began to really matter in politics, we have understood that unruly money in campaigns poses grave risks to democracy. Money cannot buy results. After all, Kamala Harris raised $1.5 billion in three months, but it’s unclear whether her need to constantly raise money influenced her unusually lukewarm economic message.
Rather, the main distortion comes from what politicians, the people who ultimately wield power, think money does.
We may now be entering a new era in which money and power are fused. Complaining that “major donors” have undue influence within the government is lukewarm. Currently, the largest donors are running the campaign. These are not loan sharks or oil and gas bandits, but major government contractors and, in Mr. Musk’s case, owners of some of the world’s largest media properties. Shortly after Election Day, Musk even moved into the president-elect’s vacation home.
Now, he and Trump’s other major donors will be able to shape administration policy in key areas such as tariffs, tax cuts and procurement. And indeed, the recent surge in funding from tech industry titans has completely changed the governance agenda of the incoming Trump administration. Did MAGA voters vote for the $2 trillion cut in federal spending attributed to Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s DOGE Blue Ribbon Commission?
In the early 20th century, Americans grappled with similar questions of wealth and power. When J.P. Morgan faced an antitrust lawsuit, he told the president: “If we do something wrong, send your men to my men, and they will fix the problem.” Theodore Roosevelt said in Corruption and Reform At different times, I took a different approach. “Sooner or later, unless there is a readjustment, there will be a day of insurrection and evil and murderous atonement,” he told reporters.
We need to develop a new reform agenda to respond to this major change in politics. Passing federal legislation that requires full disclosure of major donors, reins in super PACs, and requires actual enforcement of laws still on the books is necessary, but not sufficient. Overturning Citizens United and the earlier Buckley v. Valeo case (by constitutional amendment or otherwise). A more robust system of public financing from small donors, such as the one recently introduced in New York State. Other creative reforms seemed to represent a democratic response to corrupt governance. All are necessary.
And we need to find new languages to understand and explain what’s really going on. It’s not just the same cash access economy we’re used to. It’s something bigger, creepier, and more serious. And that’s the world given to us by the Supreme Court.
