Money trusts it's own.

I don't shit on people who want to help my cause just because they are rich. I don't turn away useful allies.

Just because they give to Democrats dones't mean they are in favor of policies benefitting the middle and lower classes. Some if not many are just hedging their bets, making sure they have their usual outsized seats at the table, regardless of what party is in charge. We've seen way too much of that already and it's naive to believe they all share Democratic values, or the kinds of policies that will address the economic inequalities that are strangling this country.

...teachers, laborers, clerical workers, etc., not a single one can give more than $2,800.

How much influence can $2,800 buy with a candidate that has received $40-50 million so far?

If they can't buy influence why are they showing up to closed door fund riasers like the ones hosted by Biden? Why do they get access to the WH others don't? It is either extremely naive or willful ignorance to think they dont have outsized influence. History clearly shows they do. The real queston is why some try to obscure that fact, or pretend that moeny doesn't buy infuence. Perhaps they know the truth about their chosen candidate but don't want others to know.

This is one of the things that drives people away from the party, and feeds the both-sides-do-it narrative.

It used to be that for Democrats large donors and dark money were a bad thing. In 2020, for some along with healthcare reform and other issues, not so much. If we could dig further into why the answer would not be kind to them.

Someone here said that were traditional - are they?

....can contribute more than $2,800.

The 13 remaining candidates have received $276,000,000 in contributions, only $604,800 from "billionaires", two-tenths of one percent.

On the other hand, the fallacy of this study is that the names, addresses, occupations, employers, and amount given is only known about 47% of ALL individual contributions. More than half of all individual contributions are "unitemized", no one knows anything about those contributors.

So, it's a flawed study that has drawn a misleading conclusion.

What is misleading is to pretend that a contribution of $2800 is all they can provide monetarily (there are other avenues to fund campaigns as you probably know but don't mention for obvious reasons) and to provide cover for those who have outsizied influence. Only misleading here is by you.

...in the FEC filings of the various candidates. And as I noted, more than half the contributions aren't even itemized so Forbes nor anyone else knows who those people are.

Here's the % of individual contributions that are not itemized by the candidates and the value of un-itemized contributions:

Sanders 70% 42,800,000
Warren 64% 32,000,000
Buttigieg 47% 24,400,000
Biden 35% 13,200,000
Yang 67% 10,000,000
Klobuchar 40% 5,500,000
Castro 66% 5,000,000
Booker 28% 4,300,000
Williamson 62% 3,800,000
Gabbard 26% 2,300,000
Bennet 35% 1,700,000
Steyer 73% 1,500,000
Delaney 13% 300,000

The Kochs spent almost $900 million to repubs and Adelson and his wife gave 10s of millions to drumpf. Yeah but keep pretending that the billionaires can "only" give $2800.

Here's some facts and analysis on the influence of big donors:

The fat cats "have given millions on the record, but many of them have also probably given an unknown amount of “dark money” to organizations that can avoid disclosure due to a complex regulatory situation and murky definitions of “political” activity."


“Donors get their phone calls answered, is one way of thinking about it,” says Ian Vandewalker, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. “We like to think of our democracy as being one person, one vote – the majority rules. But just being rich and being able to write million-dollar checks gets you influence over elected officials that’s far greater than the average person.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/02/midterm-spending-top-political-donors-sheldon-adelson

It is quite pathetic that we attack our own who take advantage of legal sources of campaign support.

Really, are those who refuse support so pathetic and shallow that if they accept money that they are compromised?

Yes, if there’s any kind of agreement, spoken or implied of a quid pro quo for campaign support, there’s a problem.

I guess I project my own values onto the candidates that I support. I can 100% say without a shred of doubt that were I in the position of running, I would accept contributions from all viable, and legal sources. I can also 100% say, without hesitation, that the expectation would be that those contributing to me, be they rich or of modest means, do so because they believe in and support the platform for which I am running; and anyone who even suggested that I “owed” or “would owe” them as a result of their contributions would get a boot in the ass out of my office and reported for their attempt to do so immediately. I’d also use my platform to call them out for their attempts publically.