Dear Editor,
There is a dangerous false equivalency in our political narrative right now.
A number of our current Democratic hopefuls have been sowing seeds of falsity with their supporters that accepting large donations guarantees corruption in the White House and that small donations are the only way to guarantee clean politics. This is bad math, literally.
This argument assumes that monetary amount drives character, when, in reality, the two are not, necessarily, connected at all. Yes, candidate Buttigieg appears to have accepted large corporate donations and donations from the 3%, wealthy class. Candidate Warren’s and candidate Sanders’s campaigns, in particular, have demonized him for this, implying that this means that he will be indebted/beholden to these donors and will merely be their pawn in the Oval Office.
However, this is a faulty conclusion. Let me demonstrate: let’s say that Warren or Sanders began accepting large corporate and billionaire donations (calm down, I know that they don’t … this is just to illustrate the point). If Sanders accepts these donations, does that mean that he will definitely be beholden to the donors? Do you think that little of his character and honor and patriotism that he’d immediately sell his nation up the Volga based on how many digits appear to the left of the period on the donor check?
No, I don’t think that you would think that of Sanders, nor of Warren.
So, then, why do you think that of a decorated war-veteran Rhodes Scholar who has never shown a single tendency to do this?
Could it, possibly, be that this angle is the only thing that the Warren and Sanders campaigns can think of to throw shade at Buttigieg?
I am not saying that you need to immediately switch allegiance to Buttigieg — or others now that he’s out of the race. Rather, I am saying that you should not demonize a candidate based on a false damnation by his competition.
Also, Sanders and Warren had better start courting these fellow American corporations and billionaires if they want to be able to beat the incumbent in November. The GOP team is spending hand over fist, plastering their message on every airwave and screen nation- and worldwide. They have a ton of donations, and they are using them.
Let me ask you this final thought: if they use their superior political funding to drown out the Democratic candidates’ message and claim another disastrous four years of looting and plundering our nation, will it really matter how big or how small the losing candidates’ donations were?
Matt Williams
New Haven
