Greenbacks & Ink Stains

Chris raises good and valid points in his response to me. There is a lot of Democratic money. When you get rich enough, you can afford to be a Democrat again. For example when Bloomberg was only a multi-millionaire he was a Democrat. When he became a billionaire he went Republican. And now that he’s a multi-billionaire, he’s moving back towards the center. I’m sure following the 2008 election he’ll rejoin the Democrats.

The super rich business people give to both sides. They have to protect themselves. After Fox’s presidential victory in Mexico, I was interviewing a very wealthy industrialist and wondered if he were happy and proud that Mexico was finally a two party nation. He shook his head sadly and remarked ruefully that he was distraught because now he’d have to pay twice as much in bribes (the word he used was mordida. We call it contributions).

My own non-scientific polling on reaction to the news that media contributions are overwhelmingly directed at Democrats is that liberals say, “Of course. Bright, creative, educated people are going to more liberal than not.” Even I am willing to see this as hubris. There are lots of bright, articulate and creative conservatives. They are however, as a group, far too smart to try to earn their living in journalism and putting ink on dead trees.