Should we worry about the influence that wealthy individuals have on politics?

See Matt Zwolinski Makes Emmanuel Saez’s Error by David Henderson.

Mr. Henderson pointed out that many of Zwolinksi's examples were of corporate influence, not individual influence. And there is plenty of influence from unions like the NEA.

Excerpt:

"There were so many things to pursue here. I’ll take two. First, I live in a highly NIMBY area and I don’t notice that particularly wealthy people dominate the discussion in favor of hampering housing construction. If anything, the wealthiest people in the debate tend to be developers who want to build.

Second, Matt is quite comfortable taking away wealthy people’s money with the estate tax, which really is a death tax. What would he feel comfortable taking away from teachers and their unions so that they would be less effective in pushing in an anti-liberty direction? Their freedom of speech? I doubt it, but I don’t know his answer.

But making those points takes us away from my main point, which is that most of the lobbying is done by corporations, not wealthy individuals. There is little doubt that Disney, to take his example, would have lobbied heavily for the extreme extension of copyright even if no Disney shareholder had been particularly wealthy.

While researching my next article for Hoover, I came across something I wrote in which I had linked to a discussion in which Larry Summers asked the same question of Emmanuel Saez. Saez had failed to make the simple distinction between high-market-value corporations and wealthy people. Go to this link and follow Larry’s reasoning from the 1:06:00 point on. It’s masterful. Larry calls on Saez to give one example of a wealthy person having much less political power because the government has reduced his wealth from a very high number to a lower, but still very high, number. When Saez answers, he gives an example of a corporation, just as Zwolinski responded to me.

There is one way in which Zwolinski probably has more understanding of the relevant economics than Saez does. At the 1:10:10 point, Saez mentions robber barons as if it’s a slam dunk, showing that he doesn’t understand that the major characters listed as robbers and barons were neither. (Other than that, it’s a great expression.) My guess is that Zwolinski understands the true facts about robber barons better than Saez does."

Democracy and Capitalism are Mutually Reinforcing

By Alex Tabarrok.

"Many people argue that democracy is incompatible with capitalism but they differ on whether democracy will kill capitalism or whether capitalism will kill democracy. Peter Thiel, for example, famously said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel’s argument has a long-pedigree. The classical economists from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill all worried that democracy would kill capitalism. Even Marx and Engels agreed with the analysis arguing that under democracy “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State…” they differed only in welcoming such a revolution.

On the other side of the aisle we have the moderns such as Robert Reich and Joseph Stiglitz who argue in Reich’s words that Capitalism is Killing Democracy as “Corporations” and “billionaire capitalists have invested ever greater sums in lobbying, public relations, and even bribes and kickbacks, seeking laws that give them a competitive advantage over their rivals…”

A third argument, consistent with the views of Hayek, Mises, Friedman and others, is that capitalism and democracy are compatible and even mutually reinforcing. Ludwig von Mises, for example, argued that “Liberalism must necessarily demand democracy as its political corollary.”

My latest paper (WP version) (with Vincent Geloso) is in the new book, Can Democracy and Capitalism be Reconciled? We take the third view and show empirically that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand. We also provide some mechanisms for this correlation which I may discuss in a future post.

The data is very clear that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand. The figure below, for example, uses the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index to measure capitalism and the Varieties of Democracy Index to measure democracy (we use liberal democracy for convenience but show the correlations are strong with any variety of democracy).

Every major democracy is a capitalist country and virtually every capitalist country is a democracy (Singapore and Hong Kong being the only two exceptions.) Moreover, the upper left region–countries with a lot of democracy and low economic freedom, i.e. state control of the economy–what we might call the “Democratic Socialism” region–is empty.

 

We show further in the paper that changes in democracy are positively correlated with changes in economic freedom. We can see this very clearly by examining a natural experiment–the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Berlin Wall created a big positive shock to democracy which was followed by large and sustained increases in economic freedom.

 

Peru began in 1970 with an authoritarian regime and only modest economic freedom. Economic freedom declined under an authoritarian regime and to levels well below those of any democracy. Modest increases in democracy brought modest increases in economic freedom. Under the authoritarian Fujimori regime there were large increases in economic freedom which in the 2000s were ratified, solidified and strengthened under democratic governments.

What we learn from this brief history is that authoritarian regimes can decrease as well as increase economic freedom. Indeed, one reason we sometimes see big increases in economic freedom under authoritarian regimes is simply that they are starting from the wreckage left by the previous regime. It’s easy to increase economic freedom a lot when you begin with a base level far below that of any democratic regime. Moreover, the Peru case is representative in that when a democratic regime is established it typically does not reject but instead ratifies and strengthens economic freedom.

What accounts for the correlation in economic freedom and democracy? The paper discusses a number of mechanisms of which I will only mention two here. Consider two ways to get rich, redistribution and growth. Redistribution can make a minority rich at the expense of a majority. A dictator can live in luxury amid national misery. But no redistribution scheme can enrich the majority—only growth can. Broad prosperity comes not from dividing wealth, but from creating it through pro-growth, capitalist policies. As a result, in a democracy, the rulers, the demos, can only get rich through growth and this provides some incentive to think about capitalism and economic freedom. The incentive is not a guarantee, of course, democratic voters can vote for bad policies but if they want to get rich they have to think about growth and that means capitalism.

The second reason for the correlation is a negative one, democratic socialism collapses into authoritarian socialism. As Robert Dahl argued:

It is not the inefficiencies of a centrally planned economy…that are most injurious to democratic prospects. It is the economy’s social and political consequences.

A centrally planned economy puts the resources of the entire economy at the disposal of government leaders. …“power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

A centrally planned economy issues an outright invitation to government leaders, written in bold letters: You are free to use all these economic resources to consolidate and maintain your power!

The bottom line is if you care about economic freedom, democracy is the way to go and if you care about democracy, economic freedom is the way to go.

Read the paper (WP version) for more."

Ritchie Torres: ‘We Should Break That Cycle of Insanity’

The Bronx’s moderate congressman on Israel, immigration, Daniel Penny and the possibility of a primary challenge against Gov. Kathy Hochul

 

By Tunku Varadarajan of The WSJ. Excerpts from the interview:

"What would Gov. Torres do? He offers a list. “Nowhere is the system in the state more broken than on the subject of public safety.” Recently enacted state laws prevent judges from considering public-safety risks when ruling on the detention of pretrial defendants, make it harder to impose bail as a condition of release, and impose “discovery rules with layers and layers of paperwork that have crippled district attorneys.” As a result, repeat offenders are routinely released onto the street.

Mr. Torres would also “favor cooperation with the federal government” in the removal of “an undocumented immigrant who has a violent criminal history, or a history of recidivism,” and roll back the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. “There’s nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing those with severe mental illness to languish and die on the streets and subways of New York.”"

"Mr. Torres also departs from the party line on education and energy. He would “defend the right of every parent to send their children to the school that is best for them” and wants “a variegated educational landscape that includes public schools, charter schools, private schools and religious schools.” He likes charter schools, which New York law limits in number. “You can either raise the cap,” he says, “or you can shut down charter schools that are underperforming and then free up slots. I would be supportive of either course of action.”

"He opposed the 2021 closing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant and breaks with his party’s green absolutists by asserting that “nuclear is the most scalable, reliable form of clean energy.”"

 

"“The reality is that the fracking ban in upstate New York, on the one hand, serves the goal of clean energy. But on the other hand, it has probably deepened the crisis of working-class depopulation in New York state.”"

 

"Whether or not he becomes governor, Mr. Torres wants to have a national impact. “I hope,” he says, “to be the face and voice of a movement to reorient the Democratic Party back to the center on issues like public safety and border security. There’s a need to return to the basics.”

He says Kamala Harris’s defeat demonstrates “that we swung the pendulum so far to the left that we fell out of touch with working-class voters, including working-class voters of color, who historically have voted for the Democratic Party. . . . Trump managed to build the kind of multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual working-class coalition that Democrats like me dream of building.”

Most Democrats are center-left, Mr. Torres believes, but “the far left has an outsized impact in defining the public’s perception of the party. We in the center have to clearly differentiate ourselves from the far left or we risk being associated with something that is deeply unpopular. . . . We should break that cycle of insanity.”"

Democracy, Capitalism and Monarchy (Yarvin)

From Alex Tabarrok.

"The Yarvin interview in the NYTimes magazine illustrates the change in vibes, but frankly, I was bored. It’s amusing when Yarvin tweaks liberals by pointing out that FDR was an authoritarian, but Liberal Fascism did it better.

More generally, much of Yarvin’s thinking is superficial. He thinks, for example, that capitalism works because firms are monarchies.

Yes. I think that having an effective government and an efficient government is better for people’s lives. When I ask people to answer that question, I ask them to look around the room and point out everything in the room that was made by a monarchy, because these things that we call companies are actually little monarchies. You’re looking around, and you see, for example, a laptop, and that laptop was made by Apple, which is a monarchy.

There are many errors here. First, Apple is one firm among countless others most of which do not produce hugely successful products. The big question is not how Apple produces but how Apple is produced. Firms operate as planned entities but they are embedded in and constrained by a broader sea of market competition. It’s the competitive environment that drives innovation, efficiency, and consumer satisfaction.

Second, Mises was closer to the truth when he wrote in Planned Chaos that it’s the consumers not the producers who are monarchs:

In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Their buying and their abstention from buying ultimately determine what the entrepreneurs produce and in what quantity and quality. It determines directly the prices of consumer goods and indirectly the prices of all producer goods, viz., labor and material factors of production. It determines the emergence of profits and losses and the formation of the rate of interest. It determines every individual’s income…The market adjusts the efforts of all those engaged in supplying the needs of the consumers to the wishes of those for whom they produce, the consumers. It subjects production to consumption.

Capitalist firms are disciplined by the necessity of persuading consumers to purchase their products and by competition. Successful firms must continuously meet our desires and needs to survive. When Apple fails to do so, it will face the same fate as countless firms before it—obsolescence and failure.

Markets do hold lessons about governance, but Yarvin draws the wrong conclusions. Democracy, not monarchy, is the political system most analogous to capitalism. As Mises observed, “The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote.” The analogy works both ways: voting in a democracy mirrors spending in a market. Both systems empower individuals—consumers or voters—to shape outcomes, whether by determining market success or selecting leaders.

Democracy and capitalism are both examples of open-access orders, systems characterized by dispersed power, low barriers to entry, and transparent, universally applicable rules. Such features foster adaptability, accountability, and broad participation—qualities essential to both economic and political success.

The West does face a modest “crisis” of democracy, but the root of this crisis lies in expecting democracy to do too much. We have collectivized decisions which are best left in the hands of individuals and markets but democracy is not a good way of making collective decisions.

Democracy is best understood as a constraint on government power, akin to a Bill of Rights, federalism, and the separation of powers. Democracy’s virtue is in providing a mechanism to remove bad rulers without resorting to bloodshed and its primary value lies in preventing catastrophic outcomes like mass famines and democide—a significant and undeniable merit. Autocracies and monarchies perform much less well on the big issues and, contrary to what many people think, autocracies do not grow faster, win more wars, or perform better on any meaningful comparison that has been investigated.

It is also essential to recognize that “democracy” encompasses a wide range of structures—parliamentary, presidential, constitutional, and more—and there is plenty of room for improved choice within the broader category. We can improve our democracy. 

The real lesson from markets is not to create monarchs but to design systems that create choice and competition and allow citizens to remove leaders when they fail."

How the Supreme Court Helped Democrats

Their losses would have been greater without rulings that protected campaign spending as political free speech

WSJ editorial. 

"Democrats took a pounding last week, but it could have been worse. The party was spared from an even bigger rout by their huge advantage in campaign spending, and for that they can thank their billionaire donors—and the Supreme Court they love to hate.

Kamala Harris raised more than $1 billion and spent more than $900 million, while the Trump campaign raised around $380 million and spent more than $350 million. In swing states Democrats had the edge in campaign spending across the board.

The margin was closest in Pennsylvania, where Democrats spent $109 million to Republicans’ $102 million. In Michigan Democrats spent $81 million to Republicans’ $18 million. In Wisconsin it was $49 million to $15 million, according to AdImpact. Mr. Trump won those states, but more narrowly than his advantage on the issues and the national turn to the right suggest he might have.

So-called independent expenditures outside the campaigns also broke records. Independent spending in all 2024 federal races was some $4.5 billion and flowed through Super Pacs allied with campaign operations, according to OpenSecrets. The Super Pacs in turn were often funded by 501(c)4s and other nonprofit groups, the “dark money” bogeymen of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s nightmares. In key Senate races in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Montana, Arizona and others, independent spending by both sides ran into the tens of millions.

Looking at all federal campaign spending, Democrats beat out Republicans with some $4.5 billion in political ads compared with the GOP’s $3.5 billion. That included ad spending for presidential, congressional and down-ballot races including campaigns and independent spending. Democratic independent groups spent $2.4 billion while Republican independent groups spent $2.2 billion, according to AdImpact.

The great irony is that none of this would have been possible without Supreme Court decisions that have opened the door to more money in elections. McConnell v. FEC in 2003 cracked open the door by allowing political parties to coordinate with candidates and make unlimited independent expenditures. Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 allowed corporations and unions to spend money in elections. The D.C. Circuit’s decision in SpeechNow v. FEC in 2010 unleashed independent spending by Super Pacs.

The Court ruled that the First Amendment protects political speech, and spending on campaigns is a form of speech. If not for these rulings, which Democrats denounce every other day, Republicans would have bigger majorities in Congress. Funny how you don’t hear cries for “campaign finance reform” this year.

What other gifts might the current Supreme Court majority bestow upon Democrats? With Mr. Trump coming back to the White House, the left may learn to love the major questions doctrine, which requires clear direction from Congress on consequential regulations from the executive branch. Democrats raged against that ruling and the Supreme Court’s 6-2 decision striking down Chevron deference in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which will also restrain Mr. Trump’s regulators.

Democrats will never admit it, but the Bush-Trump Justices will spare them from even greater political defeats."

CNN and Sen. Bob Casey’s Economic Illiteracy

The network spins short-selling into a hit piece on Republican challenger Dave McCormick’s business record

WSJ editorial. 

"You can tell the Pennsylvania Senate race is tightening because CNN on Wednesday rolled out a hit piece on GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick’s record as former CEO of Bridgewater Associates. The story happens to fit perfectly with Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s campaign strategy vilifying private business. 

“Senate candidate Dave McCormick led hedge fund that bet against some of Pennsylvania’s most iconic companies,” reads the headline, which Mr. Casey tweeted. The Democratic incumbent and his allies in the press can’t find any wrongdoing during Mr. McCormick’s five years (2017-2022) running Bridgewater, so they’re peddling economic illiteracy disguised as investigative reporting.

The piece claims that Bridgewater under Mr. McCormick shorted the stocks of roughly four dozen companies headquartered in Pennsylvania, including Hershey Co., U.S. Steel, Comcast and Penn National Gaming. Short-selling is when an investor borrows a security and then sells it with the intent of buying it back at a lower price.

Well-diversified investors take short positions to hedge risks in their portfolio. As the Biden Securities and Exchange Commission explained last year, “short selling provides the market with important benefits, such as providing market liquidity and pricing efficiency.”

Yet the CNN story makes short-selling sound nefarious. “Short positions, which are essentially bets that the companies’ stocks will drop, can hurt corporations by depressing their stock prices, making it harder to gain new financing, invest or hire more workers, according to experts,” CNN says. “For financial institutions, short positions can be lucrative.”

Yes, and so can long positions. The goal of investing is to make money, but short sellers can also lose money if the price of stocks they short rise before their short bets come due.

In any case, there’s no indication that Bridgewater was betting against Pennsylvania companies. Its investment managers don’t take short positions in particular stocks. Rather they short industries. Pennsylvania companies happened to be in baskets of stocks its investment fund managers shorted.

Mr. McCormick’s campaign says long positions accounted for 61% to 98% of Bridgewater’s investments in nine of the largest publicly traded firms headquartered in Pennsylvania between 2017 and 2021. They are AmerisourceBergen/Cencora, Hershey, U.S. Steel, Comcast, Penn National, PNC, Lincoln National, PPG and Aramark.

CNN acknowledges 18 paragraphs into the story that Bridgewater “did invest in stocks of some of the same Pennsylvania companies it shorted in other years, and overall, it reported spending more money buying stocks of Pennsylvania companies than shorting them in four of the five annual reports reviewed by CNN.” That’s a long way of saying its short-selling story is political spin.

If Mr. Casey disapproved of Bridgewater’s investment strategy, why did he tap the hedge fund to manage government worker pension investments when he was state treasurer some two decades ago? CNN tries to dress up its non-scoop by opining that Mr. McCormick’s investment strategy was “politically risky” even if it was “financially smart.”

The implication seems to be that Mr. McCormick shouldn’t have managed his investment funds in the best interest of investors, including pensioners, because risk-mitigation strategies could later be twisted by his opponents if he made a future bid for political office. But if Bridgewater had lost money under Mr. McCormick’s leadership, you’d be hearing about that from Mr. Casey and CNN too.

This episode goes far to explain why Congress is filled with lawyers and political lifers who’ve never met a payroll. Any business person who runs for office these days can expect his record to be distorted as somehow scandalous. It’s far easier to run as a cipher with no record of accomplishment like Mr. Casey. No wonder Washington is a mess."

Jimmy Carter, Champion of Deregulation

The former president, who turns 100 Tuesday, gets too little credit for making America competitive again

By Phil Gramm. Excerpts:

"The Airlines Deregulation Act of 1978, the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 and the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 unleashed competition and spawned the invention and innovation that gave America the world’s most efficient transportation and distribution system. The cost of flying a mile declined by half and air travel became a mainstay of American life. The logistical cost of moving goods shrank as a share of gross domestic product by 50%. The leader of that effort, recently retired FedEx CEO Fred Smith, describes Mr. Carter’s “underappreciated leadership” as follows: “The reduction of logistics costs in the late 20th century was profound, largely unreported and underappreciated. These farsighted changes were the great achievement of the Carter presidency.”

The Carter administration began oil-price deregulation using its regulatory powers and set in place the gradual deregulation of natural-gas prices with the 1978 Natural Gas Policy Act. And while the deregulation of the communications industry was driven by technological change, court decisions, regulatory action and finally legislation, the Carter regulatory reform through the Federal Communications Commission made competition the driving force in the development of policy. Energy deregulation, championed by Mr. Carter and then by Ronald Reagan, produced abundant oil and gas supplies."

"Many scholars, judges, lawmakers and even regulatory-agency bureaucrats came to recognize that economic regulations from the Progressive Era were hurting consumers and hamstringing American producers. A young Senate staff lawyer, Stephen Breyer, urged Sen. Ted Kennedy to take up the consumers’ cause through regulatory reform. In Senate hearings, America heard how airfares were far cheaper on intrastate flights within California and Texas than they were on comparable routes under federal regulation. The latter typically flew half empty and only to federally approved destinations, often determined by politics rather than consumer demand.

In the 1960s, the focus of academic research shifted from market failure to regulatory failure, especially after the 1970 bankruptcy of Penn Central, when America’s largest railroad died from regulatory strangulation. Robert Bork led the effort to focus antitrust enforcement on consumer welfare. Without such a focus, it had become a license for government to control key segments of the American economy. Antitrust investigators in the government agencies that enforced these regulations and court rulings increasingly found that economic regulations themselves were “instruments of cartelization,” producing higher prices, poorer service and less innovation.

The dam broke when Civil Aeronautics Board Chairman Alfred Kahn, an avowed liberal and one of the most consequential economists of the 20th century, concluded that the most perfect regulatory system could never do as good a job as imperfect markets and therefore it was in the public interest to deregulate. Proclaiming the CAB a failure, Kahn demanded that he be fired and his agency eliminated.

But analysis based on hard facts showing that government policies harm the country are repeatedly crushed in Washington by the power of vested interest. It was Mr. Carter who took on the “Iron Triangle” of established business interests, unions and government and carried the political scars he suffered in defeating them."

"At every turn in trying to expand energy production and stop the inflation, he ran into the entrenched old guard of the Democratic Party, which wanted no part of a new competitive world or any fiscal restraint."

"In April 1979 Mr. Carter used his authority to accelerate the deregulation of oil prices, though its effect on production was muted when Congress adopted, and Mr. Carter signed, the punitive windfall-profits tax. But one act proved decisive: Mr. Carter appointed Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve."

British Labour Has an Economics Lesson for Democrats

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives priority to economic growth and breaking down investment barriers over big spending

By Greg Ip. Excerpts:

"the public’s willingness to entrust the economy to Labour might have only been possible thanks to a policy pivot engineered by Keir Starmer when he became leader in 2020."

"“After we lost the 2019 election very badly, my first task was to change the Labour Party and to turn it into, amongst other things, a pro-business party,” Starmer said in an interview"

"Polls show voters think Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, is too liberal."

"Harris sought to reset the narrative, describing herself as “pragmatic” and “a capitalist” who believes in an “active partnership between government and the private sector.”"

"economic growth. Starmer talks about it a lot; he calls it his “number one mission.”"

"President Biden and Harris don’t put much priority on economic growth, preferring to talk about how income is distributed"

"Britain has grown a lot less than the U.S., averaging an annual 0.5% since the end of 2019, second-lowest among the seven largest industrial economies and a fraction of the U.S., at 2%."

"The root cause is investment, which has been lower in Britain as a share of GDP than in other G-7 countries for years. Starmer’s one word explanation for this: Instability. Since 2019, Britain has had five prime ministers" 

"His chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has said her budget, due next month will raise some taxes, but the corporate rate will stay at 25%. (Harris wants to raise the U.S. corporate rate, to 28% from 21%)."

"Starmer has embraced industrial policy: the use of government resources to promote favored industries."

"the combined $21 billion earmarked for these funds pales next to what the U.S. has done under Biden: $53 billion for semiconductor fabrication and up to $1 trillion for renewable energy in the Inflation Reduction Act."

"The modest sums are a reflection of Labour’s concern about the budget deficit, a concern that Harris and Biden (or former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee) don’t seem to share"

"Labour has zeroed in on this [policy uncertainty], quickly lifting a moratorium on onshore wind and reopening applications to build data centers in the Green Belt surrounding London that local authorities had previously rejected."

"Business is worried about Labour’s moves to increase some regulation, such as on worker conditions. The government plans to nationalize railways and limit new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea."

You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Chains? Re-examining the Hayek-Friedman Hypothesis on the Relationship Between Capitalism and Political Freedom

By Nicholas Reinarts, Gabriel Benzecry and Daniel J. Smith. They are all at Middle Tennessee State University.

"Abstract

Is capitalism a necessary condition for political freedom? Friedrich Hayek argued that capitalism is necessary for political freedom in what is now known as the Hayek-Friedman Hypothesis. While previous empirical work using economic freedom as a proxy for capitalism has somewhat confirmed the hypothesis, these results are sensitive to the definition of capitalism and political freedom. We argue that while Milton Friedman claimed that political freedom could not exist without economic freedom, Hayek argued that political freedom could not exist without private ownership of the means of production. Since indices of economic freedom include factors beyond government ownership of the means of production, this distinction could affect empirical results. We test the Hayek Hypothesis using V-Dem’s measurement of state ownership of the economy and its political civil liberties index, which provides annual data going back to 1789. Our primary results find only one robust instance where a country with heavy to complete state ownership of the economy maintained political freedom: Belarus during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Relaxing our definition to include mixed economies with moderate to heavy ownership of the economy also overwhelmingly confirms the Hayek Hypothesis with only a few robust violators."

Democrats Decried Dark Money. Then They Won With It in 2020.

A New York Times analysis reveals how the left outdid the right at raising and spending millions from undisclosed donors to defeat Donald Trump and win power in Washington.

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher of The NY Times. Excerpts:

"“Dark money” became a dirty word, as the left warned of the threat of corruption posed by corporations and billionaires that were spending unlimited sums through loosely regulated nonprofits, which did not disclose their donors’ identities.

Then came the 2020 election.

Spurred by opposition to then-President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal, pulling even with and, by some measures, surpassing Republicans in 2020 spending, according to a New York Times analysis of tax filings and other data.

The analysis shows that 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Democratic Party spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020 — compared to roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the G.O.P."

"Democrats’ newfound success in harnessing this funding also exposes the stark tension between their efforts to win elections and their commitment to curtail secretive political spending by the superrich.

A single, cryptically named entity that has served as a clearinghouse of undisclosed cash for the left, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, received mystery donations as large as $50 million and disseminated grants to more than 200 groups, while spending a total of $410 million in 2020 — more than the Democratic National Committee itself.

But nonprofits do not abide by the same transparency rules or donation limits as parties or campaigns — though they can underwrite many similar activities: advertising, polling, research, voter registration and mobilization and legal fights over voting rules.

The scale of secret spending is such that, even as small donors have become a potent force in politics, undisclosed money dwarfed the 2020 campaign fund-raising of President Biden (who raised a record $1 billion) and Mr. Trump (who raised more than $810 million)."

Landslide counties in presidential elections have increased by 283% since 1980

See Bellwether Counties Nearly Wiped Out by 2020 Election: All but one county that had chosen every presidential winner since 1980 went for President Trump this year; Washington state’s Clallam County is the lone survivor by John McCormick of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"America has become so polarized that presidential bellwether counties—those that consistently back the national winner, switching between parties in the process—are nearing extinction.

From 1980 through 2016, 19 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties voted for the eventual president in every election. Only one of them, Washington state’s Clallam County, backed President-elect Joe Biden last week."

"Election results compiled by the Associated Press show only 2.5% of the nation’s counties flipped from one party in 2016 to the other in 2020. For most of those that did flip, it was by small margins.

In 1980, 391 counties were “landslide” territory: places where the presidential vote split was at least 20 percentage points more partisan than the nation overall. This year, more than half of all counties met that definition."

If we go from 391 to 1,500 (half of 3,000) we go up by  1,109. Then 1,109/391 = 2.83.

See also How Politics Has Pulled the Country in Different Directions: The 2020 election results are just the latest indicator of how Americans have been drifting apart for decades from The WSJ.