Inside of a decade, McElwee had gone from being an intern at a libertarian think tank to being heralded as an avatar of a rising generation of millennial leftists, eventually advising both the White House and a billionaire his age. The past few dizzying years culminated in an even more dizzying month when his relationship with Bankman-Fried suddenly became a liability and, in an echo of the criminal charges against the disgraced billionaire, he was fired by the organization he founded for allegedly pressuring an employee into being a straw donor for Democratic causes.The influence of a group of people who were, quite obviously, completely corrupt, on The Discourse and on politicians over the past couple of years was very large!
How does this happen? Total mystery.
As the midterms ticked closer, McElwee’s employees were growing uneasy. Data for Progress had been at the left vanguard of politics, but as his star rose, the firm was pulled into the mainstream, working for the Democratic Party’s congressional-campaign arms. Its founder was increasingly vocal about what he saw as the excesses of the kind of progressive politics the firm was formed to support.A clique of Smartest Boys in the Room were on the take in various ways (not necessarily illegal, and not necessarily corrupt-by-DC-standards, but certainly corrupt) and they all echoed this "excess of progressive politics" nonsense.