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'Why Are People Cynical About Politics'? Ex-Obama Adviser Joins Pro-Trump Crypto Giant Coinbase
"Democratic campaigns need to start treating corporate shills like Plouffe as persona non grata," argued one progressive.
Jun 12, 2025
A long-time Democratic strategist who managed Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and advised Kamala Harris' 2024 White House bid announced Thursday that he is joining the global advisory council of the crypto exchange giant Coinbase, which donated $1 million to President Donald Trump's inaugural fund and recently benefited from his administration's decision to drop a major lawsuit against the company.
David Plouffe "has worked extensively in tech," including at Uber and the crypto exchange Binance, Politicoreported Thursday, noting that he arrives at Coinbase "a few months after the advisory council added former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—a Democrat turned independent—and Chris LaCivita, who served as Trump's co-campaign manager in 2024."
"Among Plouffe's charges will be outreach to tech-savvy voters who flocked to Democrats during the Obama era, but have shifted to the right in recent years," Politico reported. "It's another move meant to reinforce the bipartisan credentials of the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange as it pushes for broader buy-in after Republicans and President Donald Trump opened their arms to the industry and many of its policy goals."
"There is a crypto-skeptical anti-corruption wing of the Democratic Party and a crypto-embracing, corruption is business as usual wing."
Progressives argued that Plouffe's decision to take on a role at Coinbase underscores the toxicity of the revolving door between the political consultant class and corporate America, particularly the tech sector.
"Democratic campaigns need to start treating corporate shills like Plouffe as persona non grata," argued Jonathan Cohn, political director of Progressive Mass. "They weaken campaign messaging, erode public trust, and only view campaigns as grift exercises."
Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, asked, "Doesn't this put a fine point on which wing of the Democratic Party lost to Trump?"
"There is a crypto-skeptical anti-corruption wing of the Democratic Party and a crypto-embracing, corruption is business as usual wing," Hauser wrote on social media.
Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), responded rhetorically to the news of Plouffe joining Coinbase, writing, "Why are people cynical about politics."
Coinbase gushed in a statement that the addition of Plouffe to its advisory council "comes at a moment of historic momentum for the crypto industry," which spent big on the 2024 election and continues to lobby the federal government aggressively for favorable regulatory policy.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has voiced support for the so-called GENIUS Act, crypto legislation that critics say is riddled with industry-friendly loopholes. With bipartisan support, the Senate voted Wednesday to advance a revised version of the bill.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an outspoken opponent of the legislation, said in floor remarks on Wednesday that "industry is the driving force behind the GENIUS Act," legislation that could deliver a personal financial windfall for Trump and his family.
"Through his crypto businesses, President Trump has created an efficient means to trade presidential favors like tariff exemptions, pardons, and government appointments for hundreds of millions—perhaps billions—of dollars from foreign governments, from billionaires, and from large corporations," said Warren. "This is the single greatest corruption scandal in American history and, by passing the GENIUS Act, the Senate is about to not only bless this corruption, but to actively facilitate its expansion."
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Authoritarianism Isn't Coming—It's Here
What's playing out on the streets of Los Angeles and in the halls of Washington, D.C. is not a metaphor. This is a turning point.
Jun 11, 2025
The military is in the streets of Los Angeles.
That image alone—armed National Guard troops deployed by a sitting president against the will of local officials—should shake this country to its core. But it is not happening in isolation. It is part of a coordinated and escalating assault on democracy itself.
All while, in the backdrop, Congress is advancing a budget deal that expands military and ICE funding while slashing Medicaid and nutritional assistance for millions of working-class families.
And on Saturday, Trump will stage a military parade in Washington, D.C.—a grotesque celebration of state power at the very moment it is being used to crush dissent and consolidate control.
This is not a metaphor. This is a turning point.
We are witnessing, in real time, the merger of authoritarianism and oligarchy. Trump is consolidating power not just through policy but through spectacle, surveillance, and the criminalization of dissent. His targets include journalists, immigrants, students, union organizers, law firms, and civil society groups.
We know we cannot count on the same institutions that have ignored or dismissed the very communities now under threat. We are turning to the people—to the organizers, the movement-builders, the working class—to rise up and defend what remains of our democracy.
His allies are billionaires and corporate elites—Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Goldman Sachs, Palantir. With them, he is expanding the surveillance state, deregulating crypto markets, and auctioning off public power to private interests. The machinery of government is being weaponized to serve wealth and silence opposition.
Meanwhile, Democrats are fumbling.
Instead of confronting this authoritarian moment with clarity and resolve, too many are still busy in performative tactics. Just last week, while organizers were bracing for raids, the most shared political image was not a show of solidarity or urgency. It was Democrats handing tacos to Republicans.
That is not leadership. It is negligence.
The Democratic Party cannot continue to treat this as business as usual. The military is being deployed against U.S. citizens. Protest is being criminalized. Critical lifelines for working families are being gutted. And the infrastructure that supports grassroots resistance is under sustained attack.
Yet even in the face of authoritarian repression, it is the people, not institutions, who are leading.
From immigrant justice groups like CHIRLA to local organizers in Los Angeles, everyday people are rising up to defend communities that have been abandoned. These are not just protests. These are acts of solidarity. People are risking arrest, injury, and intimidation to stand for dignity, democracy, and human rights.
It is organizers who are showing up for Black and Brown communities under siege. It is students who are mobilizing in the streets to defend freedom of speech. It is workers who are fighting for unions in the face of corporate retaliation. It is faith leaders and neighborhood advocates who are providing care where public systems have failed.
The question is no longer whether this is real. The question is what we are going to do about it.
These are the people building the real opposition. Not consultants. Not think tanks. Not party insiders.
That is why Our Revolution has launched an emergency petition demanding Congress block Trump’s military deployment. We know we cannot count on the same institutions that have ignored or dismissed the very communities now under threat. We are turning to the people—to the organizers, the movement-builders, the working class—to rise up and defend what remains of our democracy.
Because this is not a series of unfortunate events. It is a strategy. A strategy to consolidate power, suppress dissent, and dismantle democratic norms. The signs are not subtle. They are loud. They are public. And they are accelerating.
We have seen this before. In other countries. In history books. And now, right here.
The question is no longer whether this is real. The question is what we are going to do about it.
If not now, when?
When history asks what we did as the tanks rolled in, as communities were criminalized, and as working people were stripped of basic dignity, our answer cannot be: we served tacos.
It must be: we stood with the people. We saw the danger for what it was. We acted. We organized. We fought. And we built something better.
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Arizona Democratic Party Moves to Stop Billionaires From Buying Primaries
"Congratulations to the Arizona Democrats for getting the ball rolling on this enormously important issue," said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Other states should follow suit."
Jun 10, 2025
The Arizona Democratic Party moved over the weekend to bar billionaires and corporations from using their wealth to purchase primary elections, a key step for progressives who have been pushing the Democratic Party nationwide to curb the political influence of ultra-rich donors.
A newly approved resolution, passed by voice vote at the Arizona Democratic Party's State Committee meeting on Saturday, instructs the party to "establish a 'People's Primary' policy to bar, to the greatest extent possible, the use of massive private wealth to buy or unduly influence our primary elections."
Organizers and supporters said the resolution's passage marks a significant victory for progressives who have been pushing Democratic leaders to target the outsize influence of big money on primary contests. The weekend vote marked the first time a state Democratic Party has formally committed to challenging big money in primaries, according to organizers.
"This is a major win for working-class Arizonans and for every voter who's tired of watching billionaires spend millions to elect candidates who will screw over the 99% to make them even richer," said Kai Newkirk, co-chair of the Arizona Democratic Party Progressive Council. "Arizona Democrats just sent a message: Our primaries are going to be decided by the people, not the highest bidder. And the days of billionaires and corporations trying to buy them are numbered."
Saturday's vote set in motion the process of crafting party policy changes that are expected to face a final vote later this year.
The resolution, organized by the Stop Big Money AZ campaign, states that the chair of the Arizona Democratic Party's rules panel "shall form an ad-hoc committee" to develop new policies to achieve the resolution's objective to "ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that candidates in Democratic primaries are not benefited by, dependent on, or elected due to outside or independent electioneering spending funded by big donors."
We did it! AZ Dems made history today. We are the first state party in our nation to commit to ban billionaires and corporations from buying our primary elections! Thank you to everyone who helped make it happen from our amazing @stopbigmoneyaz organizing team to @BernieSanders! pic.twitter.com/IkbzQ0bIce
— Kai Newkirk (@kai_newkirk) June 8, 2025
While the resolution doesn't mention super PACs explicitly, it targets wealthy donors "who are circumventing legal limits on direct contributions to a candidate's campaign fund to spend tens or hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars of private wealth to elect the candidates of their choice."
Super PACs, an outgrowth of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, are allowed to raise unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, and other organizations, provided that they don't coordinate directly with the candidates they are supporting—a restriction that is often flouted, or impossible to detect, in practice.
A report published earlier this year found that the top 100 billionaire families in the U.S. pumped a record-shattering $2.6 billion into federal elections in 2024—which amounted to one of every six dollars spent by all candidates, parties, and campaign committees in total. The overwhelming majority of that spending flowed into the coffers of super PACs.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a vocal supporter of banning super PAC spending in Democratic primaries, applauded the Arizona Democratic Party's passage of the "People's Primary" resolution.
"Congratulations to the Arizona Democrats for getting the ball rolling on this enormously important issue," Sanders said Monday. "Billionaires must not be allowed to buy Democratic primary elections. Other states should follow suit."
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