There was a clear winner in Tuesday’s presidential election. Billionaires won in a landslide.

No matter what the public wants and no matter the outcome of elections, the oligarchs almost always win. They get a neoliberal government that does little or nothing to address the crises those same oligarchs are profiting off of. They get a government in which “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy,” as summarized by Princeton researchers.

Billionaires fund both American political parties and they have wants, needs and desires. Elections cost money–a lot of it. For the 2024 election, a staggering $15.9 billion was spent on ads and campaigning by both Democrats and Republicans, making it the most expensive election in history; in just one week, nearly $1 billion was poured into political ads. 

In other words: the country’s wealthiest are bankrolling the election, wielding political power and influence like never before. The U.S has strayed far beyond recognition from the Constitutional order crafted by the Framers and is corrupted systemically. The fact that billionaire dominate our political process proves it.

It’s not just the sheer scale of the political ad spend that’s worrying, it’s the disproportionate influence of billionaires. Eighteen percent of all political ad funding came straight from the pockets of a tiny handful of America’s mega-rich. In fact, according to USA Today, Harris had 83 billionaires supporting her—making up 6% of her campaign funds, according to Al Jazeera—while 52 backed Trump, but they were extremely generous donors, making up 34% of his total campaign fund. 

Let’s not forget that Donald Trump is a billionaire, and Republicans have traditionally been the party of the wealthy.

And don’t get me started on the so-called “opposition” party–the Democrats–who used to represent working-class Americans but who now caters largely to the professional/managerial/caste, with some assorted “socially liberal” billionaires tossed in. But, of course, the Democrats will rewarm their familiar tale of victimhood, where they lost because Harris was a woman of color, or too progressive. It’s like they learned nothing from 2016. They’re similar to the French Bourbons. “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

But, here’s the thing. Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she’s a woman or because she’s black. She lost because the Democratic Party has turned its back on America’s working-class. At this point the modern Democratic Party needs to be burned to the ground and its ashes scattered to the wind. Furthermore there is a great demand for a non-billionaire party.

Kamala Harris lost because, if your political and media system is rigged by donors then it limits the choice to two neoconservative/neoliberal candidates, with anything else denounced as “communism”, the most hardline candidate has an edge. The United States political system keeps moving further to the right, pushed and pulled by both political parties. You can’t stop that relentless shift by voting for one of the two symptoms of your diseased political system.

I hate to break it to you but voting at the national level is largely useless and no one is coming to save us. We are going to have to rise up against the malignant system itself. We can’t afford to have any illusions.