Progressives frustrated by Biden’s warning about billionaires’ influence in final days

NEW YORK (AP) — The left wing of the Democratic Party has been warning for decades that America is heading toward an oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires control much of the country’s wealth and political power.

President Joe Biden raised these concerns from the Oval Office for the first time this week, just before leaving office. In the hours following Biden’s farewell address, progressives responded with a mix of appreciation, bemusement and frustration.

“Now he’s telling us,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-N.Y., wrote on X, also referencing Biden’s ideas for the U.S. Supreme Court. “Biden speaks out against dark money, for climate action and for SCOTUS term limits. I insisted for four years for this speech.

For much of the past four years, progressives were among the Biden’s biggest cheerleaders. And many remain supportive. But for others, the Democratic president’s words were too short and too late as the leader of a political party that increasingly welcomes big donors, even as he attacks President-elect Donald Trump . warm relationships with others, tech titan Elon Musk chief among them.

The debate is over the influence of billionaires US politics could have major implications for the policies that emanate from Washington and the political landscape of the upcoming elections.

While Trump presents himself as a fighter for the working class, the new Republican president is poised to assemble the richest presidential administration in history. He has tapped more than a dozen billionaires to fill government positions, including Musk, the world’s richest man, with a net worth topping $400 billion.

CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg is co-hosting a reception with billionaire Republican donors next week to Trump’s inaugurationthe latest sign of the Facebook founder’s support for the president-elect.

Democrats hope to undermine Trump’s appeal among working-class voters by portraying him as beholden to the billionaire class and trying to tie him to Musk, who once supported Biden and his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama.

According to White House records, Biden had not uttered the word “oligarchy” in the context of American politics until this week. And yet he made the influence of billionaires in American politics a major focus of his final planned speech in the Oval Office.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our fundamental rights and freedoms, and everyone’s ability to advance.” , Biden said with Vice President Kamala Harris and his president. family watching. He highlighted “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-rich people and the dangerous consequences if their abuses of power are left unchecked.”

Few Democratic members of Congress have publicly criticized the outgoing president, as Whitehouse has, but key figures on the party’s far left — notably those close to independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — have been less cautious.

“It is cowardly that after representing the oligarchs for 50 years in power, he denounces this threat to our nation with only days left in his presidency,” said Nina Turner, national co-chair of the last presidential campaign by Sanders. “(Biden) has enabled, benefited and emboldened the system that threatens us all, while he rides off into the sunset and will not feel the harm of what was built.”

White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back against such criticism, pointing out that many party leaders praised the speech.

“President Biden’s call to action resonated with a wide range of Democrats and others because it is consistent with the values ​​that over the past four years have led to the most significant advances meaningful for American workers since the New Deal,” Bates said. “As he said (Wednesday), it is crucial to keep that flame burning and continue to fight the abuse of power by wealthy special interests and billionaires who want to profit at the expense of American taxpayers.”

Tiffany Muller, executive director of End Citizens United, a Democratic-aligned organization fighting to eliminate big money from politics, wrote an opinion piece Thursday describing Trump’s inauguration next week as ” the beginning of an oligarchy that has been in the making for 15 years.”

She recognized that the trend, made possible by the 2010 Supreme Court decision who gave his name to his group that allowed wealthy donors to circumvent limits on political donations, is not exclusive to Trump’s party.

“To be clear, Citizens United allowed both parties to raise money from the billionaire class and big business. And Vice President Kamala Harris raised more total donations in the 2024 presidential race than her opponent,” Muller wrote. “But Trump is elevating his donors to important positions in the federal government.”

Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who has warned for decades about a rising oligarchy in the United States, thanked Biden for his choice of words. The Vermont senator quoted the president again during a confirmation hearing for Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, himself a billionaire.

“What Biden said last night is that we are moving toward an oligarchy,” Sanders said when questioning Bessent. “Do you think that when so few people have so much wealth and so much political power that it is a form of oligarchic society?”

Bessent countered: “Well, I would like to note that President Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two people who I think might qualify for his oligarchs. »

Bessent was not wrong.

Biden earlier this month bestowed the nation’s highest civilian honor on Democratic megadonor George Soros and billionaire fashion mogul Ralph Lauren. And in the final days of the presidential election, Harris’ campaign elevated Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, as a top surrogate, even though Cuban has not been similarly critical of her campaign. way that Musk was to Trump with his advocacy for his campaign. X and his funding of pro-Trump super PACs.

Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, described “a feeling of whiplash,” suggesting that Biden is “desperate to appease” some billionaires while condemning others. Hauser said he wishes Biden’s team and its center-left allies had been as pugnacious over the past two years.

Faiz Shakir, a former Sanders campaign chief who launched a bid for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee earlier this week, said in an interview that Trump has at times delivered a more compelling message to working-class voters in recent elections. Shakir also criticized Cuba’s role in the final days of the elections.

Marianne Williamson, who ran a long-running presidential primary campaign against Biden and is now running for DNC chair, refused to give Biden credit for her latest remarks.

“Is this news?” she said of the outgoing president’s assessment. She added that America has been ruled by an oligarchy for years and called tech billionaires like Musk “Oligarchy 2.0.”

Neither Shakir nor Williamson are considered favorites in the race for DNC chair. And those who are are less critical of the influence of money on Democratic politics.

Elsewhere in the progressive movement, Biden was seen to have raised concerns about the oligarchy in American politics.

“Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex gave shape to an idea that has been referenced ever since,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Biden’s warning about oligarchs, calling on Americans to stand guard, is a call to action that will be felt for years to come.”

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Cooper reported from Phoenix. AP writer Isabella Volmert in Detroit contributed.