Donor Class: Who are They?

There is much discussion about Republicans rebelling against the “donor class” but the problem is that within the Republicans, the donor class themselves are not united on what they want. In 2012, it was Shelden Adelson and Foster Friess, members of the donor class in good standing, who challenged Mitt Romney's charge to the Presidency as they personally kept Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum alive, while the Koch Brothers have been the leading donors promoting smaller government and attacking crony capitalism. If anything, the Koch Brothers' funding has been a prime reason that any progress dealing with reforms and through American for Prosperity, which they fund, they have built infrastructures to help elect free market conservatives.

The real problem with the attack on the GOP donor class is that we are losing the focus on our political opponents and the reason for much of America’s downfall over the past seven plus years, the Obama administration and those candidates who enable these failures, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Nor does it help that many Trump supporters view Trump as the anti-donor class but Trump's own defense of the Kelo decision and eminent domain showed Trump's history as a crony capitalist, whereas the biggest opponent of crony capitalism are the Koch Brothers.

The irony is the often overlooked Democrat donor class and how the Democratic Party has become the Party of the rich with Google’s Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerman, Tom Steyer and George Soros acting more as oligarchies than true Democrats. The Democrats' financing has come from two sources, rich white billionaires and unions. But the union is deceptive since a union member is as likely to be located in the public sector as the private sector, and many within the public sector unions have interests that diverge from their private sector workers.

During a teacher strike a few years back in Chicago, it was noted that many union members earned double of the voters who were asked to support their salaries, benefits and a pension plan that threaten Chicago's fiscal viability (and still does). Consider that many private sector union workers supported the Keystone Pipeline but it was the Democratic Donor class and many within the public sector unions opposed the building of the Pipeline. Those same donors are doing their best to bankrupt the fossil fuels industry, home to many private sector union workers. The Democratic war on the coal industry is a war on the American worker, including many union members.

The private sector union may support government interventionist policies but they don’t want their industry bankrupted, which can’t be said of their donor class and public sector union. The Obama/Clinton/Biden/Sanders transformation of America couldn’t succeed without the support that has come from billions collected from those public sector unions and very wealthy Democratic donors.