Harvey Weinstein Is a Hollywood Problem, Not a Democrat Problem

We’ve written plenty about the hypocrisy and inadequacy of the Democratic Party here at Paste politics. It’s kind of our brand. We criticized Obama and Hillary for their delayed response on the Weinstein mess—mainly because it was so easy, not because they bear responsibility for enabling Weinstein’s horrors—but because everything is politics nowadays, the “grab them by the pussy” party decided to eschew basic logic to take an inherently hypocritical stance.

Democrats: put your money where your mouth is. Return all the Weinstein money. pic.twitter.com/3uQN0dm76A

— GOP (@GOP) October 11, 2017

Hillary told CNN that she would be donating all her Weinstein money. The DCCC announced they would be giving all Weinstein contributions to a women’s group prior to the Republican Party’s craven and opportunistic tweet. Harvey Weinstein was a prominent player in Democratic politics, but when it came to donations, he was but a minnow swimming amongst a sea of whales—as I wrote in my piece asserting that Obama sending his teenage daughter to work for Weinstein is proof that our former president was not aware of this cretin’s behavior:

The idea that Harvey Weinstein is this untouchable kingmaker within the DNC just isn’t true. What he delivered more than anything was access to celebrities, but he is far from the only person in this country who could get Hillary Clinton alone in a room with Matt Damon.

Hey @GOP, take a look at the top 100 individual donors for 2016. Show me where Harvey Weinstein falls on it. I’ll wait.

Oh, he’s not on there? Weird. Because if you followed any Republican media this week, you would have thought that Harvey Weinstein and George Soros formed an alliance with the Legion of Doom to prop up the Democratic Party. So how much money does Harvey Weinstein actually donate to Democrats? Per Business Insider:

Since the 2000 election cycle, Weinstein has donated nearly $1 million in his own name in addition to collecting and providing roughly $1.5 million as a part of “bundled” donations, which the Center for Responsive Politics defines as contributions provided by “people with friends in high places who, after bumping against personal contribution limits, turn to those friends, associates, and, well, anyone who’s willing to give, and deliver the checks to the candidate.”

Harvey Weinstein donated a little over $2.3 million to the Democrats in the last 17 years. If he had donated all $2.3 million in just 2016, he would have been America’s 97th biggest spender. Or put another way: Harvey Weinstein gave $119,656 more to the Democrats over nearly two decades than Steven Spielberg did in 2016 alone.

Some people in the Democratic Party were certainly aware of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual crimes because the DNC is close with Hollywood. However, the Democrats are not Hollywood, and Weinstein’s financial contributions don’t even come close to that of many others whom the Democrats bend over backwards to placate. For once, we can say that the Democratic Party has handled a scandal well, as donating Weinstein’s money to charity and quickly denouncing him is all that is required of them. The Hollywood elite and Weinstein’s enablers in the media (like NBC) have far more to answer for than the Democratic Party. Not everything is the fault of our inept politicians.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.