Bernie Sanders had been railing against the billionaire class for years. In December 2010, the Vermont senator held the Senate floor for more than eight and a half hours to protest a bipartisan deal extending tax cuts for the wealthy. When he ran for president in 2016, it became a line in nearly every speech.
Few in Washington paid attention to what he said. Polls showed that the billionaire class was not a big concern for voters, nor for Democrats. Gallup has long asked Americans to name the most important problem facing the country, and the gap between rich and poor drew roughly 2 percent of mentions, a number that hardly moved for over a decade.
Democrats put it in a tie for ninth place as late as 2019. There was also the optimism of the Facebook years. Silicon Valley icons like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and many others were revered in pop culture, regular guests on talk shows and on magazine covers.
Time named Zuckerberg its Person of the Year in 2010. Musk got the title in 2021, the same year he hosted Saturday Night Live. Gone are the years when tech tycoons were treated as heroes.
America has soured on billionaires, and this election cycle, voters made sure politicians listened. Around 72 percent of Americans said there is too much money in politics, according to a Politico poll. Asked whether billionaires have too much influence, 61 percent said yes, including 75 percent of 2024 Kamala Harris voters and 55 percent of Donald Trump voters.
In The Harris Poll's 2025 Americans and Billionaires Survey, 53 percent of Americans said billionaires threaten democracy, up seven points from the previous year. The amounts this cycle are unprecedented. Ad spending is projected to reach a record $11.6 billion, more than the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential race.
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