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It's funny because the day after the election I was overhearing my colleagues talking, and somehow, the impression they had was that Trump winning is the proof that rich people can just buy elections in the US. I don't expect that canadians would know much about american campaign finances, but still.
Just a few days ago I was reading multiple posts on this forum about how the $44 billion Elon spent on Twitter was worth every penny to the Trump campaign and now the Harris campaign spending $1 billion is a sign the big money is on the side of the Democratic Party?
I have no idea how much was spent by whom on each side (and quite possibly no one does), but the war chests of the official campaigns seems like at best a weak proxy for estimating that. (I'm sure there was also quite a bit of money spent on trying to get Harris elected that's not being accounted for in the $1 billion her official campaign touched.)
Going by the numbers on Forbes, Harris spent 1.6 billion, to Trump's 1.1 billion to contest the 2024 election. Musk spent $44 Billion to contest the entire culture; the relevant frame here would be the amounts spent on, say, every other major media and tech company in the nation. So yes, the big money is on the side of the democratic party. Blackrock alone has somewhere north of ten trillion dollars under management, to give one example of a company aligned to Blue Tribe.
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I listened to Pod Save America after the election and they were saying this election shows us that we need to get money out of politics. I immediately thought they were talking nonsense since they are the side that spends the most by far. These are smart, informed, experienced Democratic operatives mindlessly parroting "money in politics" talking points when the exact opposite is clearly true.
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