Big money beat bigger money in the US election

MUCH has been written in recent decades about the growing influence of money on politics and elections in the United States, including titles such as The Best Congress Money Can Buy and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. But has Donald Trump’s victory over Vice-President Kamala Harris, whose campaign had a huge funding advantage, undermined that narrative?

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville warned of the threat that big money poses to the US system of governance in his book Democracy in America. Wary of the influence of oligarchs and plutocrats, Tocqueville wrote: “The surface of American society is (…) covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colours sometimes peep.”

Today, it is the billionaire class leveraging its financial resources to influence elections and policymaking, consolidating more power at the expense of the vast majority of ordinary citizens, further widening America’s wealth inequality, and weakening Americans’ trust in national institutions.