Small Donors Face Backlash As Trump Builds War Chest

For all its arguably negative effects, the age of social media has served to increasingly democratize the realm of campaign funding.

By reaching voters more directly, modern political candidates can target smaller donors who are aligned with their platform instead of relying on wealthy elites and corporate benefactors to support their campaigns — and thereby wield a lasting influence over their actions while in office.

While such grassroots campaigning is seen by many Americans as a net positive, those who would apparently prefer that elites maintain their hidden control over the process are speaking out against the supposed ills of the new normal.

One such figure is columnist Thomas Edsall, who recently penned a piece for The New York Times that unabashedly attacks small-dollar campaign donors.

The original title of his column was “Small Donors Are A Big Problem,” but it has since been tamed to read: “For $200, A Person Can Fuel The Decline Of Our Major Parties.”

It was in the body of the column, however, where Edsall really demonstrated his animosity toward the “ideologically extreme views” he claims are held by small donors.

He used former President Donald Trump, who has proven especially adept at appealing to ordinary Americans for financial support, as an example.

“The development of microtargeting contributed to the polarization by increasing the emphasis of campaigns on tactics designed to make specific constituencies angry or afraid, primarily by demonizing the opposition,” he wrote.

It is worth noting, however, that Edsall did not similarly denounce former President Barack Obama and his 2012 supporters despite the fact that more than half of the donations he received in his re-election campaign were for less than $200.

While a number of prominent leftists share his disdain toward small donors, such beliefs are not entirely contained to one side of the ideological spectrum. Just days before Edsall’s column was published, anti-Trump conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg offered a similar assessment during an appearance on CNN.

But Dan Scneider, an executive at the right-leaning Media Research Center, took such critics to task, arguing that they “share the same goal: silencing the little guy who they believe is too ignorant to make decisions for himself.”