I’ve already heard a lot of different discussions on how to combat the Citizens United case – different kinds of legislation and various forms of Constitutional Amendments come to mind. Obviously, the Amendment route is a longer term view while the legislative route is more of a short term view. And while there some good ideas, including the one by smintheus (also noted by diarist PLS), I favor a two-pronged approach that can accomplish the following:
- Frames the discussion in a manner that makes all excuses and rationalizations for continued "corporate personhood" patently absurd;
- Is framed in a manner that this can have the support of the left and some on the right – mainly libertarians;
- Adopts a longer term view as well regarding the definition of "corporate personhood" in a manner that the Supreme Court can’t touch via a Constitutional Amendment; and
- Takes existing legislation that is already introduced in both the House and the Senate regarding Fair/publicly financed elections (although this is something that I don’t want to focus too much on here, even though it should be supported and pushed).
First things first – there is already glee on the right as this is outrageously being spun as a "win for the middle class":
BLOCK: You're saying that this ruling affects the average citizen expressing his or her voice, as opposed to corporations being allowed to spend freely.
Mr. GINGRICH: I’m saying that it allows you to have a middle-class candidate go out and find allies and supporters who are able to help them match the rich. And able to help them match the incumbent. Remember, incumbents run with millions of dollars in congressional staff, congressional franking, congressional travel. And they have all the advantages of being able to issue statements from their incumbent office. And the challenger - the person out there who's the citizen who's rebelling, who wants to change things - is at an enormous disadvantage in taking on incumbents.
This will, in fact, level the playing field and allow middle-class candidates to begin to have an opportunity to raise the resources to take on the powerful and the rich.
This is the type of nonsense arguments that are already being tossed out by prominent Republicans. The logical and really only effective counter here is not to rebut point by point regarding middle class or why this is bad, but to attack the entire premise as outrageous, reaching and an attempt to defend the indefensible. . The simplest way I can think of is to define personhood – a person is a person. A man, a woman, a child. Not a dog, not a cat, not a box turtle and certainly not an intangible entity. Even a 5 year old can understand this. And to frame it as an attack on the basic premise of corporate personhood is one that shifts the debate to where it should be – should a corporation have rights that a person has under the Bill of Rights, for example.
The issue with a number of legislative fixes for curbing corporate speech is what we just saw – it can be overturned on appeal – and when corporations have a massive pool of funds to fight these cases, it is a tough hurdle to overcome. The two links above are to public financing bills that have not been acted upon in nearly a year. The House bill has around 125 co-sponsors and the Senate bill has only 5 co-sponsors (including the outgoing Chris Dodd).
But defining the terms of the debate and pushing the only possible remedy as a Constitutional Amendment defining a "person" as a man or a woman is easy to understand, it is flexible in that it can be used to talk about corporate election meddling, lobbying or (for the xenophobes out there) foreign influence on American politics, and even more importantly, is one of the few issues that should be able to get support from both the left and the very vocal libertarian right.
Any fix will be a long term effort – even legislation won’t come overnight – especially with so many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle compromised by corporate ties and donations. That being said, there is an opportunity to define the terms of the debate, to define what is at stake, and to do it in a manner that is simple, straightforward and could have broad based support.
The Corporate Party is already starting to try and define the terms of the discussion and narrative. These attempts should not be argued point by point – they should be dismissed as an absurd attempt to rationalize something so egregious that even a child can recognize it.