If anyone had any lingering doubts about the dominating role of money in American politics, the 2020 Democratic primary should put them to rest. While all of the leading candidates have been raising record-breaking sums, they have, in the last month, nonetheless been eclipsed by the self-financed ad buys of billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg. Though neither is well known in much of the country, together, they have spent more than $300 million on political advertising, and they have been rewarded with polling results that have surpassed far more well-established figures.

Steyer’s and Bloomberg’s runs are only one part of a more general political agitation of the superrich. Billionaires are warning one another that a Bernie Sanders presidency is a real possibility and readying their arsenal to defeat him.

The political scientist Thomas Ferguson has tracked the influence of the rich on American politics for many years. To understand politics in the United States, he has argued, you merely need to know the “golden rule”: “To see who rules, follow the gold.” In the following interview, Jacobin’s Paul Heideman spoke to Ferguson about the unusually direct role of the superrich in this election, and how they can be countered.