How I see it is that the elite are the capitalists. They own the lobbies to control law, they own the means of production to extract value created by workers, and they own the media so that they can spread the ideas to enforce the status quo to protect their profits. They fund political campaigns, primarily on the side of conserving the capitalist system which both Republicans and Democrats are a part of.
There are no politicians who legitimately threaten changing our system for the better because when they pop up they're immediately shot down by the capital owners and the groups they own. They use the media to keep the working class fighting amongst themselves and pointing fingers at nonsense such as immigration as the source of the real issues that the working class faces every day.
