It Was Never About the Debate
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Yesterday, I noted that The Wealthy Are Not Your Friends. It was a pretty good diary according to most of the comments; maybe go read it to fully understand the context for this one, although it isn’t necessary.
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Also among the comments was an argument that I have seen repeated many times here on Daily Kos, which boils down to an extension of good faith to the billionaire donor class: the presumption that they are doing what they are doing because they share a similar sense of morality to you and I, and are concerned about the same things that we are.
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I don’t feel like quoting the last example of this I saw and putting its author on the spot, so I will instead paraphrase the argument: “The billionaires were so concerned by Joe Biden’s debate performance that they became convinced he would lose to Trump, and that democracy would go with him! That’s why they support replacing him!”
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That argument has always transparently been bullshit.
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You don’t need to take the word of people like me to see that for yourself. I mean, AOC is out there saying as much too, as two diaries have already covered. Hakeem Jeffries came out to endorse Biden, in opposition to all the made-up media scuttlebutt. Here’s a primer on how J. D. Vance was put together as a political weapon by billionaire Peter Thiel. Bernie Sanders went on Colbert and said the same kind of thing I’ve said:
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In a sense, we should thank Musk for making this issue so obvious. What we have in America now is a corrupt political system. That's all. We do not really live in a democracy. You live in a semi-democracy. You have the right to vote. But a billionaire out there has the right to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to further his or her aims. And what Musk has done, and other billionaires are doing, is falling into line behind Trump because they know they're going to get massive tax breaks.
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But let’s actually hear the reasons from the billionaire donor class themselves, shall we? Steven Levy at WIRED’s Plaintext sent out an e-mail which included the following:
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But if you are billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, apocalypse looms in another form: a proposed tax on unrealized capital gains that affects households worth more than $100 million.
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I’ll explain in a second why the cofounders of Silicon Valley’s preeminent VC firm insist that their opposition to this idea isn't totally self-interested, and why their analysis on how it would destroy the country is alarmist twaddle. But it’s significant that in the tone-deaf 90-minute podcast they released this week, they cite this part of Joe Biden’s budget proposal as the “final straw” that led them to support Donald Trump for president. Far from a clinical analysis of the issues that separate the two leading candidates for America’s top job, their take on Biden’s policies actually provides a useful window to explain why certain wealthy Silicon Valley luminaries previously known as Democrats are suddenly leaning Trump. (That list also includes Chamath Palihapitiya, a 2020 Biden donor who recently cohosted a huge fundraiser for the former president.)
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Andreessen and Horowitz do enumerate several points of disagreement with Biden that affected their decision to go Trump. First, they are outraged that the administration is actively policing cryptocurrency and the blockchain, an area where Andreessen-Horowitz has huge investments. Horowitz, with typical hyperbole, calls the regulation lawless and nefarious. Strike two against Biden is the provisions in his executive order that attempt to rein in negative effects of huge artificial intelligence foundation models. But the “final straw,” they say, is a budget proposal that would tax unrealized capital gains at 25 percent, affecting only citizens worth over $100 million. Biden's goal is to prevent some (non)-taxpayers from working it so their investments are never realized, allowing them to endlessly monetize their earnings by borrowing against them.
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Well, that all sounds very public-minded and not at all self-interested.
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Here’s the Financial Times, no friend of labor or the working class, on how weird tech bro billionaires are about J. D. Vance. But there’s an interesting tidbit near the end that confirms the WIRED article and adds a twist:
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As for buying access to the White House: It’s pretty revealing that investor Marc Andreessen and his business partner Ben Horowitz, who just came out for Trump in this podcast, spend a lot of time whingeing about being refused an audience with Biden, whereas they recently had a chance to push their tech policy ideas over dinner with Trump. Andreessen, who historically backed Democrats, says it was a Biden plan to tax billionaires that finally made him defect.
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(Say, do you remember how A. G. Sulzberger lost his mind and dedicated the New York Times to destroying Biden all because Biden refused to do an interview with them? Are you sensing a pattern in these personal grievances?) Here’s an Axios article with more on billionaire Andreessen and his grudges.
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Here’s The Hill reporting on billionaire Mark Cuban complaining about Biden’s restrictions on cryptocurrency, among other things.
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Here’s Fox Business with billionaire Jeff Greene complaining about Biden’s plan for national rent control, among other things.
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Here’s The Hollywood Reporter on multimillionaire Ari Emanuel (yes, Rahm’s brother) complaining about Biden, and here’s multimillionaire Ari Emanuel’s own hit piece in The Economist.
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Here’s Joe Biden himself saying, “I don’t care what the billionaires think.”
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This morning, the Biden/Harris campaign sent out a campaign e-mail entitled, “I am trying to buy your vote” which begins:
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Woah, [name]: last night at the Republican convention, Trump literally said, "I am trying to buy your vote."
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For once he wasn't lying: Trump's campaign is raking in enormous checks from crypto billionaires, Big Oil executives, and now even Elon Musk himself -- the richest person in the world.

It Was Never About the Debate

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