Has Foreign Money Turned Democrats Into a Foreign Party?

Trump instead swept the seven swing states and won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. That disconnect with the American electorate should have prompted a sea change. Instead, Democrats have spent another year attempting the same messaging and little else other than Orange Man Bad. And little else has changed as a result; the longitudinal Harvard-Harris CAPS poll shows Trump at roughly the same approval levels all year, with right/wrong directions stable (and far better than during the previous four years), and issue sets largely unchanged and favoring Trump:

• Deporting criminal illegal aliens: 78/22
• Closing the border and discouraging illegal crossings: 68/32
• Banning men from women's sports: 65/35 
• Eliminating DEI from government contracting: 63/37
• Declaring biological sex the basis for gov't policy and regulatory enforcement: 61/39
• Deporting all illegal aliens: 56/44
• Using the National Guard to stop urban crimes and disorder: 51/49

Rationally, one would expect a major American political party to adjust to the electorate. Instead, Democrats -- driven by radicals -- have pushed even farther and at times violently to the Left. Rather than adapt and adopt policies that rationally address these voter priorities with policy positions that offer alternatives to achieve these purposes, Democrats insist that every single one of these purposes is illegitimate, racist, fascist, transphobic, and so on. 

How did a major American political party come to a point where they are no longer listening to the electorate, and are mainly repudiating it? Why do they feel so comfortable assuming electoral impunity? Don Surber offers a potential insight into the problem for Democrats, which is that they have oriented themselves to other constituencies entirely. Don links to a Fox News report from Friday highlighting the massive influx of foreign money on the Left, and its direct and indirect impacts on Democrat primaries and electoral activities:

A new report revealed that five foreign charities have donated just shy of $2 billion into various American nonprofits and policy advocacy groups focused on climate change and political activism.

Americans for Public Trust released a detailed, 31-page report with receipts tracking money from foreign charities to U.S. groups. It notes that while contributing directly to political candidates is not permitted under federal law, election-related activities like "get-out-and-vote" campaigns, some lobbying efforts, issue advertising and other politically-charged activities, are in play for foreign dollars. ...

The groups that contributed to the near $2 billion in foreign money include the Quadrature Climate Foundation (U.K.), the KR Foundation (Denmark), the Oak Foundation (Switzerland), the Laudes Foundation (Switzerland/Netherlands), and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (U.K.).

The most sizable, the Quadrature Climate Foundation, has awarded roughly $520 million to 41 U.S. groups since 2020, according to the report.

Don also links to other reports linking foreign money directly to Democrat politicians, including Zohran Mamdani and Eric Swalwell. The big money, however, supports the activist Left and their organizers, who use those resources not just for issue 'education' but also for GOTV efforts and candidate recruitment. The near-elimination of USAID funding has done some damage to that pipeline, but money from foreign interests appears to be making up for a lot of it, if the numbers in these reports are accurate. 

Don points to the immediate political consequences of the influx:

This is globalism pushing bad policy in an effort to take down the United States in the name of saving the world. Bear in mind that none of the climate change rules apply to India or Red China, which just happen to be the most populous nations in the world.

Who is funding this? Well as Madge the Manicurist used to say, you’re soaking in it.

Fox reported, “The Environmental Law Institute has also received federal grants from the U.S. government in the past, most recently under the Biden administration’s EPA and State Department in 2022.”

Lee Zeldin, Trump’s man at EPA, cut that funding like a butcher carving a side of beef.

Foreigners not only are paying to promote liberal causes and by extension liberal candidates but foreigners are running their own candidates. The Squad has a couple of them and Minneapolis is about to get a Somali mayor.

Foreigners are funding the Indian who was born in Uganda and sent to New York City at some point. Now he’ll a jihadist-friendly communist—but if justice prevails, he may end up in prison instead of being in City Hall.

The Democrat Party has turned into the Globalist Party. Their constituency isn't American voters; it's the international cognoscenti, who want an America that submits to the "global community." That is why Democrat leaders do not adapt their policies and positions to the clear consensus in the American electorate, because they have already adapted to constituencies outside the United States. 

That isn't the only institution orienting itself away from American constituencies, and for the same reason. Over the last several decades, Academia has seen billions of dollars flow into its coffers from places like China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. There too, the money has pushed institutions to indoctrinate students into radical-Left globalist values and agendas. Universities have largely stopped providing foundational Western-civilization values and education in favor of revisionist propaganda about Western imperialism and colonialism. This in turn colors all of the institutions into which radicalized graduates enter and rise within those structures. 

And among those, clearly, is the Democrat Party.

This is the essential difference now between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats have spent at least the last two decades orienting themselves into a hard-Left globalist party thanks to the influence of foreign money flowing into their organizing establishment. Republicans have become more nativistic party, in part out of reaction to the Democrat swing towards globalism and in part because of Donald Trump's ability to rally conservo-populists to his banner. It's the conservo-populists who still stick to the American experiment, however messily and fractiously they do, and it's the GOP that still responds to the American electorate. 

Follow the money, as the saying goes -- and when you do, the evolution of both parties becomes clear.