The Oligarchs are Doubling Down on Republicans

And Democrats should make the most of it

Inauguration Day 2025 looked and felt like a coronation, as Donald Trump was installed in a position of immense, unprecedented power. Since he had returned to office despite the Jan. 6 insurrection, it was obvious that time-honored checks and balances on presidential authority wouldn’t apply to him. And the megabillionaires who had spent vast sums to assure Trump’s victory had no qualms about appearing as the new MAGA oligarchy. Through their political and monetary fealty to Trump, they had positioned themselves to dictate policy, free from petty democratic constraints and concern for public welfare. They evidently expected that they would spend years effectively ruling the nation in their interests, along with the president they had bought.

Now, a year and a half later, the oligarchs’ victory celebrations look premature. Newly elected presidents usually experience a few months of positive net approval, but Trump’s “honeymoon” barely lasted a month. He is now plumbing new depths of public disapproval:

Furthermore, Trump’s plunge is like a vortex pulling the entire Republican Party down with him. G. Elliott Morris’s model gives Democrats an 85 percent chance of taking the House despite extreme GOP gerrymandering. He also gives the Democrats a 55 percent chance of taking the Senate, despite its overrepresentation of small, rural states that strongly tilts its composition towards the Republicans.

And you know what has an even worse approval rating than Donald Trump? AI data centers:

There are substantive reasons to oppose these centers, but beyond concerns over rising electricity bills, pollution, water depletion and noise, the controversy over data centers has become a proxy for public backlash against the power of the broligarchs and their disregard for the welfare of ordinary Americans.

According to historical experience, this kind of massive shift in public sentiment should have induced hedging on the part of the big money. That is, based on past patterns we would have expected billionaires to give more money to Democrats during the midterm elections compared to the 2024 election as a way to maintain influence if the balance of power in Washington shifts.

But that’s not what is happening this time: instead, oligarchs are doubling down on MAGA. An analysis by the Washington Post finds that megadonors have already spent more than $1.6 billion on the November midterms. Here’s how that spending breaks down:

What’s the rationale here? Why are the billionaires doubling down in support of a hugely unpopular president and his hugely unpopular agenda?

This partly reflects a change in the nature of billionaires’ relationship with the extreme right. Twenty years ago American conservatism was dominated by a “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” strategy in which corporations and the wealthy used racism and bigotry to advance their goals — tax cuts and deregulation — without necessarily being racists and bigots themselves. Today Elon Musk isn’t putting on a show of being a neo-Nazi, because that’s who he really is.

Beyond that, Trump’s second presidency is so pervasively corrupt, abusive and destructive that it will be virtually impossible for anyone who supported him to move on and rehabilitate themselves. Outside of MAGA, who will ever be willing to trust Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos again? Frankly, what political hopeful would be stupid or venal enough to associate with them?

Indeed, I believe and hope that if Democrats regain power, they won’t repeat past mistakes by trying to “move on” from the corruption and scandals of the previous regime. It’s now clear that Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, enabled Trump’s return to power by slow-walking the investigation of January 6^th. Earlier, Barack Obama let Republicans off the hook by not pursuing the lies that led to the Iraq war. Let’s hope that this time the Democrats, once in control of one or both houses of Congress, will quickly initiate investigations, hearings and, where warranted, prosecutions. And it’s unlikely that Trump’s billionaire money men will escape unscathed.

So rather than trying to mollify the Democrats and defuse the coming political reckoning, the billionaire class is opening the money taps, going all out to prevent Democrats from being elected. And why not? For Musk, the Koch Brothers, Ken Griffin, Alex Karp and others hundreds of millions is pocket change, while billion-dollar business interests and, in some cases, possible criminal charges are at stake.

Rather than being daunted by the flood of billionaire money, Democrats should treat this as a campaign theme. Robert Reich had a good post yesterday titled “The Stink of Musk,” arguing that “Musk’s money shouldn’t be viewed as a problem. It’s an opportunity.” If Musk supports a candidate, that in itself can be used as an argument that said candidate is not on the side of ordinary Americans.

Reich is not only right, but the strategy of highlighting oligarch support as a reason not to vote for politicians can and should extend beyond Musk money. A case in point: when Forbes magazine finds it noteworthy that the likes of Ken Griffin, Stephen Schwarzman and Paul Singer are pouring large sums into Susan Collins’s campaign in Maine, there is an obvious case to be made that Collins is working for the billionaire class and not the working class, the middle class, or even the bottom 99 percent.

Just as the billionaires have come to the obvious realization that there is no turning back on MAGAdom, Democrats must also realize that there is no turning back on opposition to the billionaire agenda. Any failure to address corporate tax giveaways, shrinking paychecks, loss of healthcare, epidemics, loss of SNAP benefits and, yes, predatory data centers, will be perceived by ordinary Americans for the betrayal that it is. We, as a country, are at an unavoidable fork in the road. Perhaps we should extend some thanks to the billionaire class for clarifying that.

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