X (not his real name) tells the story of having tried to make a small donation to a small charity. He filled out the form giving name, address and telephone number – and the system wouldn’t accept it. The system can tell the difference between a cellular telephone, which can accept text messages, and a VOIP system which can’t. VOIP lines exist for the benefit of companies trying to sell Medicare Advantage Plans, but they only take voice messages. Calls on this line are 50% Suspected Spam and 50% Unavailable, with a barely measurable fraction showing a real name in the Caller ID window. The real name, however, is not associated with a real person. Some of the text messages on the cellular phone are associated with real people, most often Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Chuck Schumer. The charity seemed more concerned with finding a way to send text messages and e-mails than getting actual donations.
There is one saving grace to this – X is a Democrat. As bad as the flood of text messages and email is, it’s nothing compared to what Republicans have to deal with. The great New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote (12/9) “I got more than 50 emails from Democrats seeking campaign cash right after Thanksgiving, but that paled beside the flood from Trump, who seems intent on pitching every person in America several times a day.” She cites an e-mail offering a pair of Donald Trump wine glasses for only $70 dollars, although trumpstore.com offers a pair of wine glasses for only $48. While the ex-President claims he’s never had a drink of alcohol, his collection of beer glasses, highball glasses, and other paraphernalia would cover everything from beer to 50 year old single malt. At one time you could get an ice tray “this red, special edition silicone ice tray has “Trump” engraved on the inside for each individual gold bar ice cube to spell out.” ($28). Sadly, this product is already sold out.
The Republicans do have one saving grace – they helpfully check off the box saying “make this contribution monthly” so that their followers don’t have to do it themselves. On Aug. 7, the New York Times reported that the Trump campaign and the Republican Party returned $12.8 million to donors in the first six months of the year. These returns were to donors who thought they were making one-time contributions and discovered that Trump and the Republicans were going back to the well every month. or even every week. “ All told, more than $135 million was refunded to donors by Mr. Trump, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts in the 2020 cycle through June 2021...” Democrats had to return some donations, but not nearly as much, and not because of the “make this weekly” check boxes.
Even though Political Science studies contribution and voting patterns, there’s really not much known about either, in part because of the laws limiting reportable political donations. Big money, donations that might buy enough advertising to actually influence an election, goes through Super PACS and isn’t subject to reporting requirements. People who make major donations usually have something in mind – and expect to get something in return. It may be having a highway built near their factory, or having the road diverted away from their homes. Give enough and you may be appointed ambassador to a nation with a nice shoreline and good food, or a philosophic preference for low taxes – but the question “what’s in it for me?” is usually easy to answer.
But small donors have a different motivation, like the five million contributors who donated an average of $18 each to Bernie Sanders in 2020, for a total of about $96 million. One study, from Political Science Quarterly (3/16) reported that small donors are supporting a political ideology, with no specific outcomes in mind but as a form of entertainment. This observation has been reported in several other studies. But other studies indicate that for many people, political donations count as entertainment. Making a donation is showing support for a team, and better than that, getting a donation helps lock in a vote for the election. Not all voters donate, but (almost) all donors vote. Wearing a politician’s t-shirt stands alongside wearing a shirt endorsing a professional football team, and counts as an entertainment expense. In this observation, those seas of MAGA hats are already locked-in votes. Heaven help us if the people wearing those hats think this is fun.
Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sdu01@outlook.com.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2022
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