Turns out, there is no amount of money you can spend to convince a voter to vote for someone they don’t want to vote for. Just ask Kamala Harris, whose campaign burned through $1.5 billion in 15 weeks, and proved once again—conclusively—that money doesn’t buy elections.
The Harris campaign’s total debt figure remains unclear, but the runaway spending will set Democrats back for months and potentially even years to come. Factoring in Joe Biden’s fundraising totals pre-Kamala’s coup, the Biden-Harris machine raised a record-shattering $2.15 billion, and that’s without the aligned super PACs and outside groups which likely spent at least another billion dollars this year alone.
Just, wow.
That is more for a single presidential campaign than the sum total of all federal political spending just a few election cycles ago. Democrats, who endlessly cry about “money in politics,” have mastered the art of pouring money into politics at an astonishing rate. And it still didn’t change the outcome.
Democrats failed to win a single battleground state, losing the popular vote for the first time in decades and the electoral vote to a Trump campaign that raised and spent under $450 million.
If Republicans were buying elections with “big donors,” and “dark money” corrupted our political system (to use AOC’s words), wouldn’t the Democrats’ advantage have borne out? But reality is actually in reverse: Democrats only eked out their few 2024 wins thanks to their billionaire donors, with real voters choosing the candidate they wanted regardless.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Harris outraised Trump five-to-one among big donors, and her campaign has continued to ask for donations weeks after losing in November. Crickets from AOC, the supposed 2028 frontrunner who—shocker—is no stranger to soliciting lobbyist cash of her own.
Democrats who complain about “money in politics” and “reforming” a broken system are the same people who attend glitzy fundraisers in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., to pander and beg for money from celebrities and other elites. The lesson here is simple: Don’t believe them anymore.
The party that complains about “dark money” is most intent on using it. The party claiming to “save democracy” is actually the party of censorship, speech restrictions, and rigged or nonexistent primaries. The Democratic Party is the party of bad ideas, none worse for liberals than the post-primary Harris coup. Democrats are the party of elite hypocrisy.
Which brings me back to the point: Money—as essential as it is to spread ideas—doesn’t come close to guaranteeing victory. And the bipartisan laundry list of better-funded losers is proof—from Kamala and Hillary to Cruz and Rubio and Jeb! They all scored a massive cash advantage, and they all lost. A lack of money may doom a campaign, but money alone doesn’t buy a win.
The Harris campaign itself unironically makes that clear, with donations to the Harris Victory Fund designed to “help amplify” the “optimistic and patriotic vision” of the Harris-Walz campaign. The problem isn’t with America’s political system or the money “amplifying” a Harris-Walz vision for America; it is that vision itself. The leftist vision is a bad vision for America, and Americans overwhelmingly agree. Trump’s resounding win is a victory for free speech, patriotism, and common sense, and hopefully a nail in the coffin for the Left’s woke identity politics that have bitterly divided our nation.
If Harris, the most irresponsible spender in modern political history, could not buy an election against “literal Hitler” after massively outspending him, American democracy still works. The will of the American people remains the most important factor in any election.
Harris had every right to light as much cash on fire as she possibly could to amplify her message. After all, the only thing money in politics actually does is create more speech and more public discourse in the marketplace of ideas. But money obviously can’t turn a bad idea good.
Either there is no amount of money in the world to brainwash voters into thinking Democrats didn’t fail on the economy, immigration, and foreign policy, or the Democrats just haven’t found it yet. But they’ll keep trying, while crying, about all of that awful money in politics (by which they really mean any money that isn’t their own).
Good ideas win, and money helps spread them. But the dustbin of history is full of well-funded political candidates whose cash couldn’t buy winning votes.
Billions of dollars later, we can now add Kamala Harris to that list of losers. And she won’t be the last.