Well, you were minimizing the effects of money politics on politicians, and painting with the broadest brush about contamination phobias. And family history of party affiliation is kind of irrelevant for someone who wants to push useless fatalistic crap that sounds like it’s about to launch into a libertarian defense of “the rules of the lobbying game”.
Obama either said/wrote it or he didn’t, and I’m pretty sure we can’t do anything but consider actions and statements when evaluating a public figure. What Obama said, in this case, gives the lie to Clinton’s flailing defense of money politics. Deflecting, as you did, betrays a similar personal investment in money politics.
Purity isn’t why we’re pushing your ilk out. It makes sense for democracy in general to gently urge you to be among your spiritual kind in the R-party. Or you could join us with a more considered view of how democracy can grow and develop.
I’m not since he signed off on the extrajudicial assassination of US citizens using metadata to direct drone strikes. Sentencing citizens to death is a job for the courts and people should have a chance to defend themselves with a jury trial before being executed.
This shouldn’t be rewarded with the ability to turn these ideas into permanent law.
The other point that doesn’t get brought up enough: even if we lived in some imaginary magical world in which campaign finance corruption doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter.
The influence of campaign money exerts a selective pressure upon candidates to ensure that the overall legislature is biased towards monied interests. Candidates who agree with corporate interests are overrepresented, candidates who disagree are underrepresented. The corporations only need to have the ability to turn the margins to become kingmakers.
It’s like structural racism: it doesn’t require malice on the part of individuals in order to fuck most folks over.
I think you might want to reign in the assume. I wasn’t defending the current campaign finance situation, I was merely observing what it, generally, actually is, as opposed to the propagandistic taboo some folks are trying to make it.
As far as what Obama wrote in 2008: this post depends on its being true rather than its being a bit of election year positioning–that is that it’s there precisely because people like you so desperately want it to be true. Not because it actually is true.
And since Obama himself took loads of big money contributions in that very election, I think there’s very good reason to believe that the book passage is just a load of hooey put there to sway folks like yourself.
All that said, I also support completely overhauling the current finance system for both elections and issue groups.
Of the top 50 spenders, about three-fifths of them — 31 candidates in all — ran unsuccessfully. Of those, six lost to another candidate in the top 50.
For the top 100 spenders, the failure rate was a bit less dramatic, with 47 failing in their election bids, and 12 of those losing to a competitor who also cracked the top 100.
Money has is certainly necessary, but it’s not even close to a guarantee if the incumbent is unpopular or incumbent party is unpopular. There’s a long line of very expensive advertising failures to highlight this.
Another good point: money isn’t as important to election campaigns as it is made out to be. I remember before citizens united watching the same political ad 7 times during a half hour newscast. That was way beyond the point where any MORE ads would be pointless.
And Sanders campaign itself is proof that money is not the be all of electoral politics.
What’s wrong with our politics isn’t just money. Not even close. I doubt money is even public enemy 2 or 3. I think the fixation on money may be a bigger problem than money itself.
I’m not so certain. While I don’t think money is the be-all and end-all, it’s certainly important. You may not succeed with a big advertising campaign, but it’s pretty hard to deny it increases your chances of success.
More importantly, it doesn’t matter whether money actually makes a difference, it matters whether candidates believe it makes a difference. If they do and they’re serious about the election, they’re pretty much obligated to pursue it, along with the the subtle and not-so-subtle influences that obtaining a lot of money from one person or business will have.
I have been trying to figure out why it bothers me so damn much that HBO sent Obama the season premiere of Game of Thrones before the rest of us get to see it. It’s a TV show; it’s trivial. And yet it just plays into this mentality that one sends gifts to the king because… he’s the king. Even though we’re not supposed to have a king. It’s corruption on a very shallow but very broad scale. Money doesn’t matter all by itself; it’s merely one avenue of expressing influence and power. Get rid of money, and power will find another way to express itself.
The Canadian system is very different than the American one. They have tight controls on campaign spending and there’s certainly no “money is speech” concept. The executive and Senate are both selected by the prime minister who in turn the Canadian people can’t vote for directly (the prime minister is the leader of the party with the most seats in the House). Campaigns are measured in weeks and there’s no annual election day. Elections are held when the government is defeated in a parliamentary vote, or they can’t agree on a budget, or the prime minister decides to call one, or five years have passed since the last election (technically there’s a law saying it should be in four years but it hasn’t been added to the constitution). There isn’t year round campaigning and fundraising like in the States.
Things would be a lot different in the United States if that was the system we worked under.
I live out in the socialist utopia of not-USA, where there are no Super PACs and no Citizens United. But politicians are still crooked and scummy (albeit to a relatively lesser degree) and poor people still get screwed (although, again, not as much as is USA standard).
Overturn Citizens United, and the Kochs will find some other way to screw things in their favour. Elect Bernie, and there will still be crooked politicians giving legislative favours to their rich mates. Abolish money, and someone will figure out a way to scam whatever utopian barter system you dream up.
But this doesn’t mean that it’s hopeless or that you shouldn’t try. It just means that keeping wealth and power on a leash is another one of those things that requires eternal vigilance. It’s the original one, really.
I’d certainly agree that money is important. What I was thinking of specifically was all the Trump supporters for whom Trump’s purported incorruptibility is seemingly the only factor that matters to them.
Elections have been funded by rich people since forever. The system hasn’t changed all that much over time. Who financed the election of Lincoln or FDR?
Campaign finance is a persistent problem of American politics. It isn’t the reason why the system is so dysfunctional right now and it there is no crisis. Except for crowd funding, which IS a whole lot easier now, we finance elections more or less as we always have: by letting rich people do it.
Now if we are going to make changes to our society that involve changes very much against the interests of rich people, we are going to have to change that. But folks have got to stop treating actually engaging in national politics as it has existed as some sort of taboo violation. Politicians do what they have to do to win what matters most to them. They make compromises. If they need money to get their message out or to build an operation, they take it where they can get it. None of that should surprise anyone or be the occasion for orgies of self-righteousness. This is the path to power that we have allowed to develop, and anyone who wanted to get something done on a national level pretty much had to follow it.
This isn’t a matter of moral purity. It’s a matter of politics. If you want politicians to do your will, you do what you have to do to counteract the influence of others. You don’t look for the pure person who you think is immune from the influence of others. Even if those people exist, you will never have enough of them to matter.
Anyhow, a more matter of fact attitude toward how politics has pretty much always worked is . . . a far healthier attitude than one that would advocate the election of an all-consuming narcissist on the basis of his incorruptibility. Corrupt political systems can still work, and have worked reasonably well for the US for centuries.
It’d be corrupted on a scale 10x what we have here? Things aren’t all roses and chocolates up here. Our problems scaled up would look alot alike, and while we may not campaign constantly we do now fund-raise constantly. We have a 2-party system that has a 3rd party that sometimes gets to hold the balance of power, but as political dialogue becomes more polarized and fear-based we are moving always towards an absolute 2-party system. Every incremental gain in occasional victories federally or provincially by the third party seems to be offset by that creeping polarization.
And money absolutely matters. I work with a riding association, the incumbent we face keeps half a million on hand in his riding association even when there’s no election in the wind. That’s 10x what we can hope for after the writ drops, we start with 1/40th of that. Yet we get 15-20% of the vote, sometimes more.
Prop rep might help, but the current PM who promised reform favours, and will get, ranked ballots, which as applied will only strengthen the FPTP system that favours his party.
Smaller countries only seem to have less problems when they mostly just have smaller problems.
I propose the phrase “cognitive corruption” for that phenomenon. But it’s been described so often that I’m quite sure someone forged a term for it already.
Sanders’ campaign will only be understood as proof of that if he wins. If he gets 50% minus one then the pundits will say, “See, you need money, we told you” and it’s all back to normal. Similarly on the Republican side Karl Rove showed he simply couldn’t buy an election in 2012, and the big money was behind… Jeb Bush in the primary.
But money doesn’t need to be all powerful for people to believe it is. If people internalized the idea that money doesn’t win elections then I think the grip of money on the system would lessen, but as long as people believe it does, it doesn’t matter whether it does or not.
I actually think Obama’s description of how money corrupts (without actual payola) is very good. A friend of mine came up with the phrase, “If you live in shit, you start to smell.” Sure, he was talking about “ironically” enjoying “camp” things, but it applies equally here. You can’t live completely disconnected from everyday problems and not start to gradually forget what those problems are really like.
