This definitely highlights the importance of networking. I used to hate the concept that it's all about "who you know", but at some point I accepted it - it is

This definitely highlights the importance of networking. I used to hate the concept that it's all about "who you know", but at some point I accepted it - it is way too common a trope to just be a toxic symptom of one particular culture. None of what we see here is surprising. People with a lot of money are spending it on what they want, often doing what they can to make the world a better place (at least for them and their friends). They work to resolve issues; if I was a billionaire to the Democrats, I would be pretty upset that a Democrat was trashing billionaire donors - don't bite the hand that feeds you. Having been in something resembling government in college (elected + appointed members) it is easy to see why all of this happens. It is really hard to make an election truly about what the people wants because the people typically aren't well informed, don't have good voter turnout, and don't make rational decisions. That leads to lots of tricks for gaming the system, which then leads to the need to do backdoor power brokerage and of course interest in protecting what is already in place. Incompetent politicians look bad enough to lay people - imagine being in government and then seeing people you've worked with for years replaced by them. If you've gotten to this point and you still hate the system and think it sucks, I sympathize. Ultimately though, what you're seeing here is the best effort of a group of people to do the best with what they have, which is a fundamentally broken system. A first step towards fixing it might be making election results not a product of gerrymandering, targeted get out the vote campaigns, and media buys.