Money Talks: What Harris’s Loss Teaches Us About Democrats and Trin’s Administration

Kevin Rogers ’26

Contributing Writer

Kamala Harris lost this election just as much as Donald Trump won it — and she lost it swimming in the pockets of the pro-Israel lobby. In her 2024 campaign, Harris received $387,766 from pro-Israel lobbying groups, second only to Nikki Haley. In her 2020 vice presidential bid, the Biden/Harris campaign received $3.75 million, more than four times as much as the second largest recipient, Donald Trump. Also taking into consideration the $570,379 she received during her time as a senator, nearly $5 million from pro-Israel interests line Harris’s pockets.

If Harris climbed up her coconut tree to peer over the money she has received from these lobbyists, she would see a voter base that is deeply divided with her administration on the issue of Palestine. A poll from June, almost two months before President Biden dropped out of the race, shows that 86% of Democrats, and 64% of voters overall, supported the most recent ceasefire deal, proposed by Joe Biden. The same poll showed that 53% of voters and 70% of Democrats supported withdrawing military aid to Israel if they did not accept that ceasefire deal. They did not, and United States aid continued to flow to Israel. Harris knew all of this for the entirety of her campaign, and weeks before, but I guess the money outweighed the concerns of over two-thirds of her own base. 

Harris instead decided to embrace endorsements from the likes of Dick Cheney, attempting to appeal to Republicans instead of unifying her own base behind her. The shameful arrogance of the Democratic Party in assuming they had the vote of a base they abandoned, by virtue of not being Trump cost them this election. In swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, an August poll showed that over 30% of voters in each of those states would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if that candidate vowed to withhold weapons from Israel, while numbers of respondents in the single digits said this would make them less likely to vote for such a candidate. Meanwhile, out of the other side of her mouth, Harris claims it is time for an immediate ceasefire. Her empty placation of the pro-Palestinian movement could be seen as a nod towards popular dissent, a tacit embrace of First Amendment rights. Or it could be seen for what it is — empty. A freedom of speech which does not move the concerns of the people into legitimate political discourse is a form of political theater utterly devoid of meaning.

Perhaps Trinity’s administration has been taking pages out of the Harris playbook on free speech, a strategy best summed up in “Sleep Now in the Fire,” a 1999 song by rock band Rage Against the Machine: “Raise your fists and march around, just don’t take what you need.” Trinity has vowed to protect its students’ rights to “assemble and voice their concerns” — a questionable claim in itself, but even granting that claim begs the question of what Trinity means by protecting our free speech. Those exercising it hope our voices will be heard and change will be created. Administration seems satisfied to let us raise our fists and march around, but as for our demands, they and the Trustees continue to wring their hands noncommittally. Following the Board of Trustees’ Oct. 17 meeting with representatives of the Trinity College Student Coalition for Justice in Palestine, Trustees told Coalition members in an email that they would need more time to hold “fuller conversations” regarding the arguments for and against divesting from the genocide. Additionally, in response to an Oct. 25 email from a member of the Coalition, President Berger-Sweeney claimed that the meeting between Coalition representatives and the Investment subcommittee of the Board of Trustees was “not a formal part of the planned agenda for the Board of Trustees meeting.” On May 8, Vice President Joe DiChristina shared a memo informing Coalition members that Lisa Bisaccia, chair of the Board of Trustees, “assures you that the divestment request will be discussed at the next meeting of the Investment Committee.” May 8 was over five months before the Trustees returned to campus to meet.
While the genocide in Gaza is certainly not the only issue on which Democrats ignored their base in pursuit of the Republican vote (see climate and border policies under Biden/Harris), the visibility of the massive protests make it the perfect issue to highlight the failure of the party to listen to its base. Like Trinity’s administration, which continues filibustering its protesting student body, they offer a meaningless freedom of speech allowing the people to be heard, but not listened to. Although we have freedom of speech nominally, when money talks, it is louder than the voice of the people.