Sanders rips billionaires for trying to buy midterm victories
Rallying for Pennsylvania congressional candidates Summer Lee and John Fetterman in Philadelphia on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders ripped U.S. billionaires for pumping record-breaking sums of cash into the midterm elections in an effort to sway the results in their favor.
“It is not just Trump and his allies who are trying to undermine American democracy,” Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered at Franklin Music Hall Sunday night. “You are living right now under a corrupt political system that allows billionaires to buy elections.”
The senator pointed specifically to the AIPAC-founded, billionaire-funded super PAC spending big to defeat Lee in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District. Sanders also noted that billionaire Rick Caruso, a former Republican running to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, has poured $100 million of his own fortune into the California race.
“Billionaires are saying, ‘Hey, we own the country, we may as well own the political system, and I’m going to elect you and I’m going to defeat you.’ That ain’t democracy, that’s an oligarchy,” said Sanders, who argued only a massive surge of voter turnout and transformative legislative action will be enough to counter billionaires’ influence.
According to an analysis released last week by Americans for Tax Fairness, U.S. billionaires who have seen their wealth skyrocket during the coronavirus pandemic have spent nearly $900 million on federal elections this cycle, with significantly more going to Republican candidates than Democrats.
On Thursday, The New York Times reported that “political spending on the 2022 midterm elections will shatter records at the state and federal levels, with much of it from largely unregulated super PACs financed with enormous checks written mainly by Republican megadonors.”
With billionaires spending massively and election-denying Trump loyalists running for Congress and key positions at the state level, Sanders argued that the November 8 midterms are “about saving the foundations of American democracy.”
Originally published at Commondreams.org.
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