We all know that 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren loves to rail against supposed dark money in politics, Wall Street, and evil corporations. She vowed to avoid big money during her presidential campaign. She swore she would run a full-on grass-roots campaign.
How about before Warren’s presidential campaign? The New York Times reported Warren courted big money before she swore it off.
The New York Times reported:
On the highest floor of the tallest building in Boston, Senator Elizabeth Warren was busy collecting big checks from some of the city’s politically connected insiders. It was April 2018 and Ms. Warren, up for re-election, was at a breakfast fund-raiser hosted for her by John M. Connors Jr., one of the old-guard power brokers of Massachusetts.Soon after, Ms. Warren was in Manhattan doing the same. There would be trips to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Martha’s Vineyard and Philadelphia — all with fund-raisers on the agenda. She collected campaign funds at the private home of at least one California megadonor, and was hosted by another in Florida. She held finance events until two weeks before her all-but-assured re-election last November.
With enough money in her pocket, Warren declared she would not seek money from the “big-money circuit.”
Pretty easy to do when you have a comfortable amount of money on hand. Warren “transferred $10.4 million in leftover funds from her 2018 Senate campaign to underwrite her 2020 run, a portion of which was raised from the same donor class she is now running against.”
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell rounded up donors for a Warren fundraiser in 2018 at a swanky Philadelphia steakhouse. Its cheesesteak costs $128 since it “includes Wagyu rib-eye, foie gras, truffled cheese whiz and a half-bottle of champagne.” Rendell gave Warren $4,000. She even sent him a “glowing thank-you letter.”
Rendell has changed his support to former Vice President Joe Biden. He held a similar fundraiser for Biden this spring. Warren described it as “a swanky private fund-raiser for wealthy donors.”
Rendell called Warren a “hypocrite.” He retorted she did not mind “taking our money the year before,” but now calls those same people “bad guys.”
Warren’s campaign has attempted damage control. They claimed those big-money fundraisers “accounted only about one-quarter of the $28.5 million she raised in 2017 and 2018.”
The New York Times found other instances where Warren rubbed shoulders with the rich and powerful:
In Florida, she was hosted for an event by the billionaires Henry and Marsha Laufer. In New York, Meyer S. Frucher, the vice chairman of Nasdaq, held a reception for her. She was hosted by the “Lost” creator Damon Lindelof and his wife, Heidi, in Southern California. The philanthropist Stephen M. Silberstein had Ms. Warren over to his San Francisco-area home. And as late as the fall of 2018, she visited Silicon Valley, where Karla Jurvetson, a multimillion-dollar Democratic contributor, hosted an event for her.This year, Ms. Jurvetson also donated money to the Democratic National Committee on Ms. Warren’s behalf, as first reported by BuzzFeed, to help her campaign purchase information about voters (she was not solicited directly by Ms. Warren). Ms. Jurvetson declined to comment through a spokesman.
Warren’s about-face “bristled” Silberstein, who felt “insulted” over her insults. He has come to terms with it since her move to grass-roots appears to have brought her success.
Not all leftists, like Rendell, have fallen for Warren’s change of heart. Meagan Day at the liberal Jacobin Magazine warned her allies that they should not trust Warren’s declaration to ban big donors.
Day reminded readers that Warren said herself she will take up big donors if she wins the Democratic nomination in July 2020:
Warren was schmoozing in Silicon Valley and Martha’s Vineyard right up until her reelection to the Senate in November 2018. By her own account, she intends to revive the practice if she wins the nomination in July 2020. Explaining why, she told the Young Turks, “Look, I do not believe in unilateral disarmament. We need to win. We need to win in 2020. When we hit 2020 and we’re in a race with Donald Trump . . . we got to be all in.”All told, Warren has promised a less than two-year abstention period from courting the wealthy.If Warren’s heart’s not really in it, why make the promise at all? The answer has everything to do with Bernie Sanders, who has risen to prominence by saying things like, “I don’t represent large corporations and I don’t want their money.”
Day insisted Warren’s shunning of big donors “for the time being” is not enough. I don’t agree with Day on this, but she wrote that politicians, cannot hesitate when it comes to making “enemies of capitalists.” The politicians should want these capitalists to fear them “for life.”
You all know I love capitalism and free markets. But Day has a solid point when it comes to supporters on the left. Warren is showing herself as another power-hungry politician who screams big donors for me, but not for thee.
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