The oligarchs are so obscenely rich, they bend all social and political institutions to their will. “Democracy” cannot possibly exist alongside oligarchy. It is, therefore, necessary that politicians like Biden pretend that the oligarchs are just regular folks, like the rest of us. “You know what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money,” Biden assured a group of 100 rich people in Manhattan.
Black voters may have put Biden in the Oval Office, but the former “Senator from Mastercard” has always taken his orders from the oligarchy. The oligarch-in-charge at the Democratic National Committee is Michael Bloomberg, who has fronted much of the DNC’s bills this year. The coronavirus has been very good to Bloomberg: he added $10.5 billion to his mega-fortune – a 22 percent increase -- in just the two months between March 18 and May 15. Such sums can buy every important politician in the Democratic half of the corporate duopoly.
For the Lords of Capital, control of the Democrats is critical, since they are the party that claims to represent the people hardest hit by capitalist crises. (The Republican “base,” although full of people in economic straits, demands only that white supremacy be championed.) It is the Democratic Party’s job to beat back popular demands for social and economic justice, because the peoples and classes that make these demands are Democrats. As the crises become deeper and more frequent under late-stage capitalism, the oligarchy’s hold on the Democratic Party tightens, accordingly.
-- Glen Ford, "Biden, the Emcee at the Billionaires’ Ball" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).
