One of the things that's always struck me as bewildering is the moronic tendency that many on the Left seem to have with regards to bitching about "too much" money in politics, esp. when it comes from corporations or wealthy donors. They assume so much but have very little empirical evidence. Not only that, but the arguments are just weak as hell! Please, fellow liberals, let's stop this nonsense.
For example, in 2010, the Center for American Progress had supposedly 'discovered' that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had foreign branches (called "Am Chams, if I recall correctly), and these raised money in their own areas. Center for American Progress (rightly or wrongly) assumed that the COC then used some of this money to lobby and run ads during the election cycle. Now, I'm no friend of the COC, and I find much of what they do to be abhorrent, but what I really had a problem with was this constant assertion that they used the money from foreign sources even though it had never bee proven!! They kept telling all sorts of tv stations, pundits, etc. this crap. They hounded Congressman after Congressman after this discovery, and all the while, they had never proven it to be true, even up to election day.
There is an incredible amount of ridiculous assertions regarding money on the Left, how it's spent and who spends it in our political system. I will attempt to debunk these in a straightforward fashion as follows. I'm sick and tired of this echo-chamber behavior on this side of the aisle that just accepts these dumbass points without question.
1. There's too much money in campaigns
Too much compared to... what, exactly? I mean, we spend more on things like advertising as a nation than presidential elections! Do you wanna ban or curb advertising and say it's all evil? Should we ban porn because we spend "too much"? This is nonsense. I hate it to break it to fellow lefties, but elections cost money! Media time ain't free, and giving speeches, holding rallies, etc. are anything but free. What, does the Left assume all that money just goes to "rich people" or vanishes into thin air?? Just accept it already. The president's budget is now over $3 Trillion a year. $1 or $2 Billion for an election is a very small price to pay, in fact. It's not even 1% of the budget! It's an even smaller percentage of our entire economy. If anything, we're spending too little.
2. The amount of money an organization spends lobbying automatically rigs the game
While this may SEEM like an obvious point given where we are right now, it's probably a little more complicated than that. Real cases of bribery and corruption in Congress from donors are much more rare than many liberals assume. I'm pretty sure that there are many expenses, including salaries, that these companies and groups have to account for when they send lobbyists to and from Washington. Plus, sometimes smaller groups with less money CAN get their way if they present the facts and can really drive home their points. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. It's more realistic to say that those with more money are able to much more effectively lobby and do PR than those with less resources, not some silly conspiracy theory of bribery and extreme corruption.
3. Corporations and rich people "buy" politicians
This is a favorite for idiots like Cenk Uygur, and it drives me up the wall! Cenk always claims the reason progressives can't get anything done and why Republicans almost always get their way is because our politicians are "bought", esp. by big business. However, correlation is not causation! You can't just look at the donations to a candidate by a particular group, then look at their voting record and say "Aha! They're doing the group's bidding." Besides, for all their bitching about how Republicans and Blue Dog Dems are "bought" by big business, has it never occurred to them that it could also, by their logic, be applied the other way around? If Republicans who take money from big business can be "bought", why can't Democrats who take a lot of money from unions also be "bought"?? Who says that Democrats who take lots of money from unions are automatically far less greedy and 50,000x more altruistic??
Look, candidates during election time court their friends, favorite interest groups, etc. and ask them for money! Elections cost money, of course. And if those groups, people, etc. find them worthy, they'll donate. End of story. Show me a SINGLE big business or rich person in America who actually thinks that his donation to a candidate during election time will mean that the candidate does his bidding forever, and maybe I'll change my tune. I mean, if this whole "bought" story were true, why do groups that give money to candidates still lobby them afterwards?? If anything, campaign donations are investments, not bribes. You're giving your favorite candidates a better chance to win, not to buy his support forever.
Let's not forget the fact that the FEC (not exactly the most right-wing bureaucracy around) has YET to find that all these Congressmen are "bought" by donations or were 'bribed' into doing their bidding. You really think the FEC wouldn't take the chance to pounce on Congressmen who were involved with obvious bribery?? Hell, if this bought theory made ANY sense or had any truth to it, couldn't big business give tons of donations to guys like Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich, and then those guys would just immediately change their tune?? But that has yet to happen...
4. Attack ads are the end of the world
This is an extremely fallacious view of campaign ads. The Left seems to have this really weird view that attack ads can just suddenly change every viewer's mind with one glance. They forget that the people who watch these ads have their own views! Attack ads and money spent on them don't just happen in a vacuum. If anything, as actual empirical studies show, attack ads motivate more people to vote in general. Yes, there are swing voters and undecideds, but they are few and far between, and they are the people attack ads are focused on influencing, not the rest of the people who've already made up their minds. As any elections scholar will tell you, campaigns go after a critical 3-5% (something close to that) of the masses that they can really influence in addition to their other supporters. Campaigns don't waste time in states or areas they know they won't win, and thus, they don't run ads just to influence people who are totally committed to the other side, nor do they run ads to "further" influence their current supporters!
This was especially prominent in 2010 when several on the Left kept bitching about the Citizens United decision. They claimed it would "open the floodgates", and while it may have in terms of campaign ad spending, who the hell cares, really? So what if a bunch of right-wing groups spend money running stupid attack ads? Does that automatically mean the country is just gonna believe them all and vote conservative overwhelmingly? Come on... Of course, when the Left cites merely the amount of money, the underlying assumption seems to be that "If a group spends tons of money on ads, they will win", and while this could be true (because a group that can run more ads likely influences more people to support them and so on), it's not an open-and-shut case.
Besides, why is it bad for a corporation to spend money defending itself and its interests from what it may see as "too much taxation" or "overregulation" but "good" when a liberal group does it? Let's stop being hypocrites like this.
5. Campaign finance law allows for the rich and powerful to donate by the millions each
Not true at all! If any of these liberals would actually take a look at federal campaign finance regulations, they'd see that it's not the case. For individuals, at least at the federal level, contributions are capped at $2300 or $2500 (no matter if you're rich or poor), so it's imposssible for a guy like George Soros to give a single candidate 100k while you give him 2k. Corporations have banned from giving money directly from their treasuries to candidates since 1907 with the Tillman Act. This stuff about "Goldman Sachs gave Obama this much" or "Halliburton contributed this much"? Don't buy it! It's likely that, if the co. itself actually did donate, they used a PAC, which they have to raise separate funds for.
There is also the situation of bundlers, but if a manager in a co. asks people to support a certain candidate with donations, and he bundles all of those, can you really claim it's "the company's" donation? More often than not, this is what liberals get confused about. When they claim a certain group got tons from a single company, it's probably because of a bundler who's an employee there. I highly doubt, though, that all the employees donated simply to "protect the company" and not because of their own ideology and views.
PAC contributions are capped at around 5-10 grand or so, and it's been that way for a while. So if a PAC donates, say, $500,000 in one election cycle, big whoop. If they spread it out over 20 or 30 candidates, for example, I don't see the big fucking deal. Each of those candidates then got a fairly small amount.
Of course, there are some "special limits", but I highly doubt they're allowed very often, hence the word "special." And there is the issue of soft money, although that was curbed heavily thanks to McCain-Feingold, but to assume that that money is automatically a cover for "corporate funds" or "buying politicians" is quite a leap to take.
6. The fact that a certain Congressman or politician received millions from a particular sector automatically means they're doing all the group's bidding
For example, you might hear someone say that a certain politician got tons of donations "from the banks." However, what you have to keep in mind is that in every sector in our economy, there are small and large businesses. Oftentimes, the interests of small businesses conflict with those of big businesses. Small businesses want to be left alone and want a true free market; big businesses wanna eliminate or limit competition as much as possible, get corporate welfare, subsidies, etc. To assume that a certain sector supported this or that Congressman in a monolithic fashion is just downright ludicrous.
7. Campaign finance reform works and will save us all
When you take a good, hard look at our system... not really. FECA was enacted in the early '70s after the alleged campaign finance abuses of guys like Nixon. However, can we really say that we have any more faith in our system than Americans 40 years ago?? Can we really say it's any more responsive to average joes? What GOOD has campaign finance reform done for this country?? If anything, it just seems to save face.
Yet liberals continue to insist that we severely limit campaign finance even more and include things like taxpayer funding of campaigns as an option. Some, however, want to just end private contributions altogether, further de-linking the citizens from those they support on the campaign trail.
The notion of campaign finance reform is based on this really odd idea that money alone determines everything that happens in the political scene. There's no such thing as courting people for votes, influencing them, etc.; it's only about who spends more. While I don't deny the power money has, I'm not going to naively suggest that it is the cause or the only cause of shit that happens in our system. Folks who insist on campaign finance reform think that because our system is "bought" by the rich, if we just eliminate their ability to 'buy', it will make all our politicians angels or some shit.
This is bullshit! Our politicians are the way they are because of a) the culture and way they were brought up and b) because we don't hold them accountable nearly as much as we should. Republicans aren't the way they are just because big business gives them money; they were likely raised that way or heavily influenced all throughout their lives to love business. Democrats aren't the way they are simply because unions and other liberal groups give them a lot.
Campaign finance reform is just a lazy, defeatist man's attempt to deliver a quick fix to a problem that is many-pronged and cannot be solved in just a few years. We need to clean the entire system and our culture. This is not easy, and that's probably why CFR advocates don't like this option. They'd rather just stick to the tired old story that money determines everything, and if we just remove the "corrupting influence of money", we'll be a-ok.
Yeah... and pigs fly.
