As I watched Seth Moulton’s interview on Pod Save America, I thought, “Why are they not talking about the issue of money in politics? It’s the era of small donors, Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, the Brand New Congress, and Justice Democrats. Why not talk about the damaging impact of money in politics?”
That made me think, “Maybe Moulton isn’t talking about it because he’s playing the big donor game. Could that be the case?” The beauty of campaign finance laws and the Internet is that I can look up enough data to draw some inferences and maybe a conclusion or two in search of an answer to my question regarding Moulton’s lack of care about big donors financing campaigns. My first stop in this quest to answer this question is the Federal Election Commissions website, fec.gov.
To get to Candidates or Committee campaign finance data, click or drag your mouse over the “Campaign Finance Data” button on the top left of the page. You’ll be given a list of links where you can search the data. I’m using the “Candidate” button. That means I’ll be searching for my candidate/opponent/other by their name, in my case: Seth Moulton. At this date, “Moulton, Seth” search for President has no data, so I’ll go to the next best thing, his most recent house race. Why?
Well, if we know Seth’s masters while he was campaigning for Congress, we could know the masters he’ll likely have if he were to win the Presidency. He won’t win, but for sake of this thought experiment, bear with me. First, I’m going to look at Moulton’s 2018 Congressional race. See below.
I’m going to form my theory of Moulton based primarily on his bigger donors in his “Itemized individual contributions.” If you click on the dollar figure across from the “Itemized individual contributions” button, you’ll be taken to an itemized list of donors and amount they donated. You can sort that list many ways, I just rank the highest donors on top and scroll through them.
You might be asking yourself: Why should I care about his donors? The answer can be found in the story narratives that can be created by focusing on his donor list. These narratives can be used in campaign strategies against an opponent, or consequently, can be used by your opponent to reveal your weaknesses (so it helps to do this to yourself too).
For example, in his Pod Save interview Moulton proclaims that he is of humble beginnings (the overused humble-origins story of American politicos). He also strongly implies he’s had a relatively middle-class/working-person’s life for most of his life. This humble origins narrative, when pressed against his donor list, a list that generated over three million dollars for an upstart Congressional race in 2014, a breakneck pace of fund raising pace no doubt — for newcomer or veteran politico alike. Moulton’s working-class story vs. rich donor funded congressman are in direct conflict. Biden’s Scranton, PA schtick suffers the same authenticity deficit.
Moulton’s campaign finance records serve an important function of highlighting working-class vs. rich conflict. Even a surface-level look raises the long-brewing conflict of Democratic Party identity. A coursery look at Moulton’s donors begs the question: Is the party a workers party or a party representing banks, multinational corporations, and managers of imperial decline, OR is this a party that fights to make the world a sustainable place to live for the masses of people, trust busts, tackles climate, end mass incarceration, and the list goes on and on? Bill Clinton and Barack Obama represent the former manager centric party. Their politics are collapsing globally leading into 2020. FDR and LBJ represent the latter more worker centric party.
The two previous paragraphs explain why it’s problematic that Moulton takes any corporate money at all. There is a different, but just as valid claim to launch against Moulton regarding some specific donations he takes. How can you claim to be a workers party and take money from some of the biggest companies and strongest interests that have given us the world we have today, an anti-worker’s world. A world where Capital is deemed superior to Labor in all forms…it’s pretty disgusting honestly. A sick sick country.
As recently as his 2018 Congressional Campaign, Moulton received donations of over $5,000 from the following companies: Deloitte, The Capital Group Companies Inc. PAC, UBS PAC, Raytheon, The Home Depot; and took $2,500 of more from the following companies: Leidos Inc., Mortagage Bankers Association PAC, Eli Lilly PAC, McKesson Corp., Credit Suisse, The Boeing Co., the American Medical Association, United Health Group Inc., The Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Comcast, Vertex Pharma Inc., Fidelity PAC, Abbvie PAC, Employees of Northrop Grummon Corp.
Ask yourself, if you had a donor list like this, what issues would you stay away from if you ran a presidential race? Your big donations from Eli Lilly, AMA, Leidos, suggests strong resistance to Medicare for All. Your big donations from Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing suggest you’re not going to want to change much about the war on terror in a meaningful way, much less end the endeavor/war all together. Your big donations from Mortgage Bankers Ass’n, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, and Citigroup suggest you’re tied in enough with some of the deepest pockets, you don’t really care much about campaign finance.
If you take time to watch this Seth Moulton interview, you will see all of these positions, or lack/omissions of positions, in full detail here. I think there is a very simple case to be made that Seth Moulton is a representative of the imperialist corporate state bent on forever war. The donations that he takes and that have funded his political career suggest as much.
The fact that Seth Moulton identifies as a Democrat is a problem. Moulton is little more than a front man for the corporate domination of American politics. Though his latest position on Iran is right; however, Moulton shouldn’t be in Congress, much less running for the presidency. The days of corporate domination of American politics must come to a close.
