In what was a culmination of his storied comedic career, George Carlin gave this epic riff, “It’s a Big Club, and you ain’t in it”
-by Patrick Toomey
"There’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you…
"It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people-- white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on-- good honest hard-working people continue-- these are people of modest means-- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all-- at all-- at all."
Fifteen years after Carlin was taken from us way too soon, Reid Epstein yesterday’s New York Times reminded us of the continuing currency of his cogent commentary:
When President Biden traveled to San Francisco last month, he raised more than $10 million in 36 hours from wealthy Democrats. Trips to Chicago and New York netted millions more, as did fund-raising events around Washington, proving that the party’s big-donor class is fully committed to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign.
But the small-dollar online money spigot that helped Mr. Biden smash fund-raising records during his 2020 presidential campaign has not yet turned on, and there are ample signs that it may be months before it does.
The Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund, its joint fund-raising vehicle, collected $10.2 million from small donors— defined as those who gave $200 or less— during the three-month fund-raising period that ended June 30, according to a Federal Election Commission report filed Saturday. That figure is about half of the $21 million President Barack Obama’s campaign raised during the same period of his 2012 re-election effort.
Democrats involved with Mr. Biden’s campaign and the world of online fund-raising detailed a host of reasons for Mr. Biden’s relatively low small-dollar haul.
It ain’t rocket science— his major investors got a tangible return in term 1, and they reasonably can expect further returns in term 2. OF COURSE they’re all-in on his re-election campaign. Prospective small donors feel (with ample justification) differently.
Big investors are transactionally motivated. Small donors give b/c they’re enthusiastic about the candidate and what he/she represents. What ordinary Americans are actually enthused about Joe Biden? What ordinary American has a clue as to what (in his lucid moments) he actually represents besides fealty to his big investors? Those who pay the piper call the tune.
So we’ll have the fourth straight cycle in which antipathy to Trump is the donkey’s calling card, again from Epstein:
Once Democratic donors become focused on the Republican primary and what’s at stake in the 2024 election, the Biden campaign will have no problem raising record amounts of money online,” said Lauren Miller, who served as digital director to Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaigns.
Better late than never for an attempt at grassroots outreach, I guess:
Unlike the Obama and Trump campaigns, the Biden campaign didn’t begin with a digital fund-raising team in place. Instead, it has relied on the Democratic National Committee for its online solicitations. The campaign advertised last week that it was seeking a “director of email and SMS” to lead a division that typically would have more than a dozen people. The campaign recently hired a grass-roots fund-raising director, an official said Saturday.
Here's the final icing on the cake:
Two of Mr. Biden’s top advisers, Anita Dunn and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who are overseeing his re-election campaign from the White House, this week formally blessed a super PAC, Future Forward, as the chief outlet for large sums of cash from supportive billionaires and multimillionaires.
The party of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and The Great Society makes no bones about the fact that it’s running a re-election campaign of supportive billionaires and multimillionaires, by supportive billionaires and multimillionaires, and for supportive billionaires and multimillionaires. It’s banking on continuing antipathy to a twice impeached and (likely) four times indicted opponent who publicly offered bleach ingestion as an antidote to the country’s worst pandemic in a century.
Given the consequences of a second Trump term (that would likely also give us Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker McCarthy), it actually matters that the donkey somehow manages to wheeze across the finish line in “Battle of the Addled II.” There will not, however, be any enthusiasm for such a campaign, and there will be a minimal mandate at best for a second term.
ADDENDUM:
This recent Slate piece provides tangible examples of how reliance on supportive billionaires and multimillionaires skews Democrats’ priorities:
There’s something of a pattern here, one that freights that statement with irony. Throughout the Biden presidency, the famously moderate president has had his ambitions thwarted over and over by none other than his fellow centrists. From the original Build Back Better Act (which a small group of House moderates worked to sabotage) to the minimum wage hike in the American Rescue Plan Act (which was knocked out by centrists in the Senate), Biden has found some of his greatest opposition from his very own. Both of those failed proposals were, at various times, considered Biden’s potential “signature” accomplishment, much as student loan debt cancellation later assumed that mantle.
In the second quarter, the Biden Victory Fund raised $40 million. Big donors include: Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg ($1,779,200); Choice Hotel’s Stewart and Sandra Bainum ($1,859,200); LinkedIn founder and very conservative Democratic activist Reid Hoffman ($699,600); Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker ($125,000); OpenAI’s Sam Altman ($100,000); Netflix’s Reed Hastings ($100,000); Barry Diller ($100,000); Peter Orszag ($100,000); Tory Burch ($50,000).