There’s an addition element as well that you might want to include: in many cases the collaboration (better called collusion) is coerced.
Basically donor entities are threatened into pumping (laundering) money into the progressive apparatus. If they try to stop, they are targeted for destruction, as a way to send a message to anyone else who thinks of leaving.
Case in point is what happened to Susan B Komen Race for the Cure when they cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. It was a token amount of money that PP didn’t really need, but Komen and it’s leaders were persued with an incredible level of viscuousness and vindictiveness for daring to do so.
IMHO there’s a massive amour of evidence out there supporting multiple RICO cases against the Progressive Political Machine ...
They operate very, very similar to the Gambinos
Of this there is no doubt. I was born in Ohio, and I can
tell you in Youngstown or the E side of Cleveland back in my day,
there was precious little difference between mafia and politics,
all the same people for the most part
Trafficante would be Exhibit A...