Vermont senator and 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders sent out what appears to be a particularly epic subtweet on Monday morning. Sen. Sanders has never made his feelings about the super-rich a secret, and has long run on a platform that calls for the wealthy to pay their actual fair share in taxes. In fact, he’s tweeted that “billionaires should not exist,” period.
While Republicans are unsurprisingly critical of Sanders’ tax plans, extreme wealth is not quite a partisan issue. In fact, some billionaires are running for president right now—as Democrats.
Tom Steyer, for example, is a billionaire who simultaneously has a plan to tax the super-rich, like himself. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who didn’t officially run and confirmed in September that he would not, floated the idea of joining the race as an independent, too. Interestingly, though Schultz is a billionaire, he apparently doesn’t like being called one. Most recently, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also a billionaire, entered the race. In about a week, he’s reportedly spent millions on television ads.
Sen. Sanders tweeted the following and quickly got reactions.
Zing!
Sanders isn’t the only progressive talking about billionaires entering the race. Fellow 2020 hopeful Julián Castro expressed his thoughts on billionaires joining the race now in a recent interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton. As Mediaite reports, Castro told Sharpton he believes “Everybody is entitled to run. At the same time, I don’t get the sense after having traveled the country for 11 months now, I don’t get the sense that what folks are looking for is a billionaire savior.”
The timing of billionaires entering relatively late in the race while Sens. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren gain popularity is, at minimum, a curious coincidence. While their respective plans to tax the ultra-wealthy are unique, Sanders and Warren focus on the same goals: holding the super-rich, including corporations and Big Tech, accountable for the taxes they should be paying.
Only one-third of Americans “admire” billionaires, according to a Bloomberg poll. But will candidates use their fortunes to run for office themselves, instead of donating that money to elevate arguably stronger or more needed candidates? That seems to be the case. Castro has a good point—on one hand, (almost) anyone is entitled to run. But it’s hard not to think of the women, people of color, transgender folks, and low-income people who are struggling to survive in their campaign runs for any level of office while others buy national ads—if not essentially entire spots on the debate stage—with ease.
This dynamic centers on an important question: Do you want to run for office because of your ego, or do you want to actually help progressives? If it’s the latter, donating money back into local or state-level campaigns is never a bad idea, especially if it’s going into the pockets of the most historically disenfranchised in the race. Donating funds to progressives in the race is an opportunity for the super-rich to (ahem) put their money where their mouths are. Giving progressives the chance to actually make progressive changes means supporting them when you can—or at the very least, not buying your way in to talk over them.