Under the category of "unhealthy forces to democracy," campaign finance may be second only to social media. The wealthy certainly have an outsized say in who our leaders will be, and the Citizens United ruling by SCOTUS certainly didn't help.
Out-of-state money is another thing. Should a Minnesota Representative be accepting campaign contributions from anywhere besides Minnesota? Of the $8.2MM raised by Ilhan Omar from individual donors in the '24 election cycle, 93% came from out of state. Who exactly is she representing?
The “best person for the job” is very seldom on the ballot. And it is true that Michael Bloomberg’s billion dollars could have been used much more effectively than it was. But those are the kind of decisions made way above most of our heads.
It’s kind of funny. When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, some people joked about having an “actor” as president. We’ve now come full circle with the current White House resident. There are similarities and there are differences between the two. But what has really changed is the tone and the perspective of the reporting on the chief executive.
Until the money is removed from politics we will get more of the same. And there is really only one way it will ever change.
Technically he is running in the same race as Angie Craig and Peggy Flanagan.. But since he's not taking campaign money, nobody really knows he exists. I don't happen to agree with a lot of his policy positions, but I think it's a sad commentary on our current political state that without tons of money for his campaign, he almost never even gets mentioned in articles For example that talk about that race.
I think folks who advocate for "getting money out of politics", and folks who argue for something resembling a "right" for individuals and entities to give as much as they want to whatever campaign they want, are both wrong. The amount of money a campaign has is like any other variable that contributes to winning: You need "enough". Beyond that, one really sees diminishing returns. It is also possible (though, I think, rare) to see a large enough influx of money to a campaign end up being counterproductive. In that way, money in campaigns is like so many "input variables" in any process. Like, say, consuming food calories, toward maintaining one's health. Enough is enough; Once you get close to enough (or not far past it), the marginal benefit of a little more is diminished; And once you get too much, bad things can happen.
Many of the same people who think there's "too much money in political campaigns" decry how much money Tom Steyer spent in California, or how Kamala Harris ran through a record amount of campaign cash in a shortened campaign (with no primaries!). The point often skimmed past is: They. Both. Lost. It is really hard to "buy" a win in a contested election in America. I'm sure it's possible, but it's ridiculously rare. It is not at all uncommon for the candidate with more money to lose. In fact, it happens all the time in Congressional races where one candidate is a locally-popular extremist of either party, and the opponent raises tons of cash from people nationwide who are emotionally invested in removing the extremist from office. Convincing folks to donate instead to a viable but underfunded candidate running against a less-notorious incumbent elsewhere has been a tough problem for the national campaign committees of both parties - and no one really has a solution yet.
On the other hand, it is slam-dunk easy to lose any election if one doesn't have enough cash. We tend to gloss over this by arguing that a given election wasn't truly "contested", or the cash-poor candidate wasn't "viable", etc., etc. Which are just other ways of saying "you have to have 'enough' cash" without admitting out loud to that as a truth.
How much is "enough"? That depends. On the office being run for, on the strength of the opponent, on the wisdom and experience and creativity of the campaign team - on a lot of things. Which is why any form of campaign contribution law or public financing law is so hard to get close enough to "right" that it doesn't actually make things worse... at least eventually, as campaign professionals learn how to finesse the rule. Which is what Obama's team did... to a rule that Democrats were mainly responsible for establishing in the first place.
Under the category of "unhealthy forces to democracy," campaign finance may be second only to social media. The wealthy certainly have an outsized say in who our leaders will be, and the Citizens United ruling by SCOTUS certainly didn't help.
Out-of-state money is another thing. Should a Minnesota Representative be accepting campaign contributions from anywhere besides Minnesota? Of the $8.2MM raised by Ilhan Omar from individual donors in the '24 election cycle, 93% came from out of state. Who exactly is she representing?
https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/ilhan-omar/us_congress/individual_donors?cycle=2024&mpid=1071715&shem=rimspwouoe,
The “best person for the job” is very seldom on the ballot. And it is true that Michael Bloomberg’s billion dollars could have been used much more effectively than it was. But those are the kind of decisions made way above most of our heads.
It’s kind of funny. When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, some people joked about having an “actor” as president. We’ve now come full circle with the current White House resident. There are similarities and there are differences between the two. But what has really changed is the tone and the perspective of the reporting on the chief executive.
Until the money is removed from politics we will get more of the same. And there is really only one way it will ever change.
Look no further than Billy Nord.
Technically he is running in the same race as Angie Craig and Peggy Flanagan.. But since he's not taking campaign money, nobody really knows he exists. I don't happen to agree with a lot of his policy positions, but I think it's a sad commentary on our current political state that without tons of money for his campaign, he almost never even gets mentioned in articles For example that talk about that race.
I think folks who advocate for "getting money out of politics", and folks who argue for something resembling a "right" for individuals and entities to give as much as they want to whatever campaign they want, are both wrong. The amount of money a campaign has is like any other variable that contributes to winning: You need "enough". Beyond that, one really sees diminishing returns. It is also possible (though, I think, rare) to see a large enough influx of money to a campaign end up being counterproductive. In that way, money in campaigns is like so many "input variables" in any process. Like, say, consuming food calories, toward maintaining one's health. Enough is enough; Once you get close to enough (or not far past it), the marginal benefit of a little more is diminished; And once you get too much, bad things can happen.
Many of the same people who think there's "too much money in political campaigns" decry how much money Tom Steyer spent in California, or how Kamala Harris ran through a record amount of campaign cash in a shortened campaign (with no primaries!). The point often skimmed past is: They. Both. Lost. It is really hard to "buy" a win in a contested election in America. I'm sure it's possible, but it's ridiculously rare. It is not at all uncommon for the candidate with more money to lose. In fact, it happens all the time in Congressional races where one candidate is a locally-popular extremist of either party, and the opponent raises tons of cash from people nationwide who are emotionally invested in removing the extremist from office. Convincing folks to donate instead to a viable but underfunded candidate running against a less-notorious incumbent elsewhere has been a tough problem for the national campaign committees of both parties - and no one really has a solution yet.
On the other hand, it is slam-dunk easy to lose any election if one doesn't have enough cash. We tend to gloss over this by arguing that a given election wasn't truly "contested", or the cash-poor candidate wasn't "viable", etc., etc. Which are just other ways of saying "you have to have 'enough' cash" without admitting out loud to that as a truth.
How much is "enough"? That depends. On the office being run for, on the strength of the opponent, on the wisdom and experience and creativity of the campaign team - on a lot of things. Which is why any form of campaign contribution law or public financing law is so hard to get close enough to "right" that it doesn't actually make things worse... at least eventually, as campaign professionals learn how to finesse the rule. Which is what Obama's team did... to a rule that Democrats were mainly responsible for establishing in the first place.