This election feels like a time warp.
Give or take six weeks ago, Joe Biden had just spectacularly flubbed a debate, and kicked off a chorus demanding he drop out of the 2024 presidential election. Long-blue Silicon Valley started becoming more and more of a political battleground, as big names like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz came forward in support of Donald Trump.
Fast-forward to Wednesday night: Kamala Harris is now the nominee, and I’m on a "VCs for Kamala" Zoom with hundreds of Silicon Valley techies. The Zoom party, which had as many as 600 people come through, raised about $150,000. Credit for $50,000 of that goes to legendary investor Ron Conway, who within the first ten minutes of the call promised to match the first $50,000.
Read more: Why I started ‘VCs for Kamala’
"Everything's at stake right now," said Tiffany Dufu, founder of The Cru. "Our ability to control our own bodies is at stake…I've spent my entire career fighting for women and girls, and I’ve spent my career trying to promote and advance women’s leadership. This is the time. 'You only get one shot. Do not miss this chance to blow this opportunity.' And let me tell you, when a Black feminist starts quoting Eminem, we’re on the precipice."
It’s astounding, time is fleeting—and this election inarguably is in a different place now than when the summer began. In some sense, the VCs for Kamala Zoom fundraiser felt like a microcosm for just how quickly this election has shifted. VCs for Kamala was just started in late July by VC firm Graham & Walker founder Leslie Feinzaig. The group has rapidly garnered support and buy-in from some Silicon Valley heavy hitters, including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman.
"People who worry about kind of little corner cases in crypto, taxation, or regulation are missing the fundamental importance of a stable, unifying force, both domestically and internationally," Hoffman told the Zoom audience in a tacit reference to Andreessen, Horowitz, and other outspoken Trump-supporting VCs who've cited concerns about regulation under a Democrat-helmed administration. "Kamala Harris is actually, in fact, the business candidate. The Apprentice is a television show, [and] does not create a credential for doing this."
"Looking at some of the comments, Kamala Harris is definitely the blue lightsaber in this," Hoffman added. (Do I need to note that this is a Star Wars reference?)
And, yes, there was some smack talk, with Andreessen Horowitz mostly in the crosshairs.
"The competition is funded by Andreessen Horowitz and some other funds," said Bloomberg Beta head Roy Bahat, who presented a pitch deck outlining the Kamala bull case. "But we all know more capital isn't necessarily the thing that makes the difference. It's that, plus a plan for execution."
This election feels like a time warp, because it ultimately is. Harris became the de facto nominee with fewer than four months left in the race, and in the VCs for Kamala Zoom, urgency was both an undercurrent and a theme.
"Nowhere else in the world can someone like Kamala Harris have the possibility of becoming president," said VCs for Kamala organizer John Corrigan. "But in order for us to usher that into reality…it’s going to take the actions of each and every one of us, every day."
VCs for Kamala has so far, including Wednesday night’s fundraiser, raised about $176,000 for Harris. But they’re up against stiff competition. At a June fundraiser, David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya spearheaded an event for Trump that reportedly raised $12 million. Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire posted on X in late May that he was donating $300,000 to Trump. Elon Musk also expressed his support for Trump in the aftermath of the July assassination attempt on the former president.
But I’ve started to wonder if these frames that I and many other reporters are using about a politically charged tech civil war are actually useful. I’ve been thinking we’ve perhaps too heavily emphasized the roles of tech-adjacent actors in recent weeks. Of course, given what I do for a living, I believe that tech matters. But I don’t want to lose sight of what’s essential here: This election is far bigger than tech and certainly bigger than any billionaire or billionaires (they will likely be small in the eyes of history anyhow).
I’m not alone in feeling this way: Approximately three out of four Americans believe to some extent that democracy is at stake in November. That suggests that people of both political affiliations feel this way, and that history is also at stake. And because this election is a time warp, there’s still a lot that’s going to shift unpredictably between now and November.
Let’s do the Time Warp again.
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Correction: The email version of this newsletter described Dufu as president of the Tory Burch Foundation. While that is true, she was not at the event in that capacity.
Nina Ajemian curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
