What Biden’s Star-Studded, $25 Million ‘Grassroots’ Fundraiser Says About the Democratic Party

Isaac SchorrMar 29th, 2024, 12:51 pm
 

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Joe Biden attended a fundraiser for his reelection campaign in New York City on Thursday.

He previewed it on Wednesday, (“Folks, you don’t want to miss one”) and then again on Thursday afternoon (“Folks, @BarackObama, @BillClinton, and I are hours away from hitting the stage”). In both instances, he referred to the event as a “grassroots” event — you know, the kind you might put on to raise money for your local soup kitchen or booster club.

So, what were the three presidents up to? Were they raffling away baskets to parents in a high school gymnasium? Serving up plates of cheap spaghetti in a cafeteria? Did they run a makeshift carwash?

Well, not quite. Instead, they were lifted onto centerstage to cheers, lights, and smoke like Guns N’ Roses, surrounded by adoring fans who came to hear them yap — Stephen Colbert tried to be funny, and Lizzo tried to sing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a modest, resilient, little $25 million fundraiser charging $100,000 for a picture and between $250,000 and $500,000 for an invite to the afterparty Nothing, that is, except for pretending that it’s modest, resilient, or little.

Thursday night was a party conceived of by the wealthy and powerful for the wealthy and powerful — and it was a fabulous success! Biden raised a ton of money that he will use to try to hold onto the most consequential office in the world. There is no earthly reason to be ashamed of or dishonest about what it was. That’s why his opponent is planning an even more grand affair.

Yet Biden’s team, obviously, was uncomfortable with the sheer spectacle of it all. So uncomfortable, in fact, that they felt the need to insist (i.e. lie) about what occurred.

The disparity between what they described and the truth reflects a fundamental challenge for America’s progressive establishment. Donald Trump’s infamous trip down the escalator in 2015 and all that followed did not just change the nature of the GOP, but of the Democratic Party as well.

While the Democrats have thought of themselves as the party of the multi-racial working class since FDR cobbled together his New Deal coalition, that is no longer the case. Their appeal now is to college-educated, upper-middle-class individuals with a distaste for the proud vulgarity of the Trump-run Republican Party and a strong social incentive to oppose it even when it’s right.

Voting patterns reflect this trend. Trump has funneled this (reliable) voting block into the Democrats’ column, but has also made remarkable gains among (lower propensity) voters in the white working-class and Hispanic community.

In 2020, Biden won suburban voters by 11 points and a whopping 46% of Biden voters had a four-year college degree. Meanwhile, just 31% of Trump voters had the same educational attainment.

Trump also did noticeably better with Hispanics than he had four years earlier and now, some polling indicates that he might actually win them in 2024.

As the Democratic Party’s demographic composition has changed, so too have its policy priorities. The party’s embrace of bail reform and gratuitous exercise of prosecutorial discretion don’t reflect the plain interests of working-class voters in those neighborhoods. Crime is, after all, principally a tax on the poor because it disproportionately victimizes them both directly and indirectly. But it does reflect the sensibilities of affluent people who spend their formative years immersed in a homogenous academic environment where failure to support those policies makes you a pariah.

The same is true on the issue of immigration. Hispanics are often the ones who feel the brunt of the Biden administration’s negligence at the border; that’s why they are far more likely to trust Trump than they are to trust Biden to handle it. Well-to-do people living a safe distance away from the consequences of their actions, on the other hand, believe that the only relevant factor in determining what makes for good immigration policy is whether it sticks it to Trump.

The Democratic Party exists in large part to protect the self-conception of successful people who also want to believe that they are good people. That’s why it balances out its virtue-signaling, vice-encouraging policies with indefensible giveaways to their richest voters (looking at you, SALT deduction). And that’s why the president is bending over backward to pretend that his lavish fundraiser was some kind of organic expression of the little people’s love for him.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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