David Wallace-Wells writes:

Two weeks from now, the midterm elections will deliver an explosion of narrative meaning: about the country and its future, the president and his movement and his legacy. But the election cycle has already taught us a couple of very important things about money’s place in our democracy.

One, after about a decade of national confusion on this point, the Republicans have shown themselves to be the unmistakable party of wealth, particularly the smash-and-grab kleptocratic variety. And two, at least in this election cycle, money by itself doesn’t really seem to matter. In critical races in red states, national Republicans are dumping unheard-of sums of money to save their majority — and barely making a dent in Democratic leads.

Let’s take the first point. This election will be the most expensive in history, with more money projected to be spent on political advertisements than even during the presidential campaign of two years ago. And though President Trump’s popularity is at historic lows and the Republican Party regularly registers tsunami-scale deficits in polling, Republicans are actually leading in the overall spending race. How? According to calculations by The Washington Post, the four biggest donors this cycle (including groups, nonprofits and firms) have given to Republicans, as have seven of the top ten. The single largest donor, Elon Musk, has donated 3.6 times as much money as the biggest Democratic donor, George Soros, and is almost single-handedly bankrolling Ken Paxton’s U.S. Senate race in Texas against James Talarico, as my colleague Teddy Schleifer reported last week. [Continue reading…]