The former rich democrats sabothed their own party

Republican senator Susan Collins faces a difficult offer of re -election in Maine next year, but she has an ace in her sleeve: the Hollywood Democrats who love her and are ready to fill her electoral chests.

August 19 The New York Times Collins reported to a collection of funds on his behalf on September 26 in the Bel Air house in Sherry Lansing, the former president of Paramount Pictures and a large -part collection of the Democratic Party. The Bigwig of the Media Casey Wasserman, which shares the same political profile as Lansing, will cohost the event. Harry E. Sloan, president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who, in the past, supported the moderate Republicans such as John McCain but recently donated to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, will be present. The reception is oriented towards the heels, with ticket prices ranging from $ 3,500 to $ 10,000.

Like the Times Notes:

The fact that Ms. Collins is the toast of certain liberal donors is something odd moment. But the senator has proud to be independent, fans among moderate democratic voters and donors.

The Collins dinner offers an snapshot from the special world of the rich democratic donors, who like disproportionate power, even if they frequently make decisions that are terrible for their party and their country.

Supporting Collins is a perfect example. One might think that donors who identify themselves as a democrats or even consider themselves friendly towards the party would recognize that the defeat of Collins is essential – especially since Maine, where Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump by 7% in 2024, gives the Democrats a rare chance to return a seat to the Republican Senate in 2026.

The democratic fans of Collins would probably say that they think it is important to support the “moderates” like her, regardless of the party they come from. But the carefully maintained reputation of Collins as a senator ready to counter Trump’s extremism is in tatters. Even as a centrist a source that Time Acknowledges that his “protest votes are as strategic as they are symbolic” (in other words, almost never expressed when they could really stop a policy that Trump wants). Collins voted for all candidates in Trump’s office except one. During the first three years of Trump’s first term, she supported more than 96% of her judicial candidates, including the judges of the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. She now claims that she was misled by these candidates on abortion, but that does not change the fact that the end of Roe c. WadeAs well as other legal horrors, rests on his shoulders.

Beyond the fact that its claims are moderate are fictitious, Collins deserves to be defeated because it is a member of the GOP, a party that threatens American democracy. Meeting the impact of Trumpism will need to win as many democratic seats as possible. The fact that Collins has a political profile that the rich democrats like (fiscally conservative and socially liberal) should not have any importance. She has an R next to her name. This should be the end of the discussion.

The rich democrats collecting funds for Collins obviously do not understand or do not accept the common refrain of their party leaders that it is a maximum peril moment for democracy. An obvious explanation of their behavior is that, as members of the 1%, these donors know that Collins will take care of their financial interests better than democratic alternatives such as Graham Platner, an oyster farmer hoping that a robust message of economic populism will propel him to victory.

Age is another factor. In an article published earlier this year in the Journal of Public EconomicsPollitologists Adam Bonica and Jacob Mr. Grumbach document that gerontocracy is a problem that intersects both the political elite and the class of donors in the United States. The average American is around 39 years old, the average voter 47 and the average member of Congress 57.5. But the age of the average donor even exceeds this. As the Bonica and the Grumbach note that

If we lay the donors by dollars’ amounts, we find that the average dollar came from a 64-year-old man (that is to say that the average age of weighted in dollars is 63.9). The median dollar came from a 66 -year -old man. We also note that only 9% of dollars in contribution came from donors 40 years or under.

In other words, the typical donor is almost 20 years older than the typical voter.

Older, richer, white and more conservative than the public as a whole, donors tend to prefer candidates who think and are also closer to their age. The fact that Collins is 72 years old and has been in the Senate since 1997 makes her more attractive to the donor class, whatever their affiliation.

The tendency to gerontocracy among donors also has a distinct ideological distribution. It is a group that responded to Trumpism by adopting a belief in the old restoration of the regime which envisages the best possible future as a return to the glory days of the Bipartite Commission. It does not matter that this nostalgic vision of the past has little impact on reality (since conflicts have always been endemic to politics). We already know that it is a political impasse. This is the kinds of myths that Biden seduced when he expelled his friendship with his racist reactionaries like Strom Thurmond, and Kamala Harris tried to exploit when he praises the support she received from Liz Cheney and his family. As we know too well, the voters were far from impressed.

Gérontocracy is a problem because different age cohorts can have incredibly different interests. As Bicona and Grumbach:

There are also high reasons to support a greater representation of young people according to the cohort effects. Societal crises, technological changes and economic shocks are not uniformly distributed over time. In other words, the age in politics is more than the effects of the life cycle – there are differences of crucial importance in generational cohorts which leave us uncertain to know if the younger and future generations will reach the same political domination as the current generation of baby -boomers. The generation of baby-boomers, for example, has built considerable wealth thanks to housing, but then helped create restrictive zoning laws and other policies that have made wealth by the property more difficult for young generations. Compared to young people, older generations will also avoid a large part of the civilizational cost of climate change.

One of the main reasons why Democrats lost the presidential election in 2024 was the enormous erosion of the vote of young people. Too many young voters who had supported Biden in 2020 were seated in the 2024 elections or voted for Trump. The alienation of the young people of the party has many factors, but surely one of the reasons is that the Democrats are in the grip at a ratherocratic and geriatric donor course which prevents the party from embracing economic populism or listening to the deep repulsion of voters towards the genocide in Gaza.

The collection of fundraising for Collins is emblematic of a class of donors in contradiction with the voters of the Democratic Party. It is a class of donors that is more likely to sabotage their own party than to help them gain elections.