I get e-mails all day, every day. They request campaign donations for people running for office. You get them, too.
Often enough, the hard sell is that the other candidate is ahead in building a campaign war chest, so it's really important to donate. The other candidate, we're often told, is winning, as if they're winning the election, because they have more money.
A version of that has come true very recently. Incumbents Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush both lost primaries, because (or we're told it's because) AIPAC unloaded tens of millions of dollars on their opponents. In the primaries. In favor people who represent the same party, but, for AIPAC's important purpose, are either not opposed to the genocide being perpetrated by Israel (Netanyahu), or didn't say they were opposed. But Bowman and Bush were openly opposed. So AIPAC's money floodgates opened wide. And Bowman and Bush lost.
The issue, though, is why it's important who has how much money. A side issue, of course, is that large donors are buying something, and they expect to receive what they've paid for. That's between the donor and the candidate. (If it occurs to you that you, the public, the voter, the taxpayer, the supposed constituent, are missing from this deceptively simple equation, you're absolutely right. This has nothing to do with you. You're a pawn. You're a stooge. But at the same time, you're in a weird, indirect way sort of the point, because electeds don't get elected unless you vote for them. And "therein," the Bard tells us, "lies the rub." How can you be completely irrelevant, and even often enough a victim, while at the same time being the point?)
American politics are amazingly corrupt, especially considering they were intended to be a democracy. You might not have any wish to live in a dictatorship, and your initial impression might be that you don't like them, but you understand them. Someone wishes to be in power, and often enough raid the public coffers, so they elbow everyone else out of the way in one way or another. You understand the goal, and it's not hard to see how it gets achieved. But you don't think you live in a dictatorship, because where you live, you get to choose who's in office. That's what you tell yourself. So what's with the very well-funded war chests? What's with AIPAC? Why don't candidates simply make their arguments, have some debates, and see who's more persuasive?
The problem is, what if the arguments, or platforms, are terrible, and almost no one would favor them? But you still, somehow, want to win an election, on the "strength" of an argument with which few people would agree, and will imperil or disadvantage most people? Well...you sort of have to cheat, in one way or another. The easy way to cheat is not to tell the public/voters the truth. And that certainly happens. Or you convert your position (or the title of a Bill) into some sort of legalese so that it's not recognizable for what it is. In fact, it's proposed as the opposite of what it really is.
Or you can stop the people who are most likely to disagree with you from voting. That's also an industry. If you think the people with the greatest disadvantages, who get themselves in legal trouble trying to cope with their disadvantages, would be more likely to vote for a candidate who offers advantages, or some sort of repair, you just invent a new law that says that anyone who was in legal trouble can't vote. Ever. Or, if you can identify large enough groups of people who wouldn't agree with you, and would vote for someone else, you invent a voting district, just for them, and lump them all into that district, so as many of them as possible get to vote for one candidate, and everyone else gets to vote for several candidates, or lots of them. But still, that has nothing obvious to do with those very large donations.
I said something wrong many months ago, and someone corrected me privately. I said that broadcast media were required to broadcast, for free, emergency alerts. It did used to be that way, but Reagan ended the requirement. I have no idea why Reagan would have wanted to keep the public unaware of emergency alerts, but it raises an issue. It sort of raises two of them. They might, in theory, have nothing to do with each other, except they both contribute to the money train and the corruption in American "democracy."
First, let's suppose that politicians, who were not themselves being bought off by, for example, the broadcast media -- I still don't know why they would object to donating a few seconds to emergency alerts -- realized that Reagan imperiled the public, and they reinstated the requirement for the free emergency alert broadcasts. If they could take that step -- it sounds like a small step (but "a giant leap for mankind," so to speak) -- maybe it would occur to them that there are other things the broadcast media should be required to broadcast for free. For the sake of discussion, I would propose that they give equal time to all political candidates, and broadcast whatever the candidates want to say. Let them give us their best argument, for free, and they're not allowed to spend money on yard signs or anything else. Mano a mano. The problem is that someone would have to pass a law like that, and the people who would have to pass it are the incumbents, who would in no way agree to give challengers the same chance the incumbents have. (It's a well-known farce how much time incumbents spend on the phone getting their besties to donate, instead of, you know, being in their house of Congress and doing the public's business.) They have an advantage, and they want to keep it that way.
One reason, then, to have a lot of money is that it helps you cheat. An indirect part of cheating is buying visibility, on TV, with yard signs, or any other method. And that brings us to the other reason for the need for money. I regret to say that the public is more or less tragically influenceable. If candidates bombard them with exposure, the public have shown a willingness to take the easy route, and assume that whoever is most visible must be better. The public do not evaluate the candidates and their arguments. They can't be bothered, and besides, campaign seasons are very protracted, at least on a national level. (That's the linchpin to the other problem.) How much time and effort are most people going to spend evaluating candidates over the course of many months or more than a year, when they can just rely on some easy-to-remember-and-repeat soundbites that they hear frequently?
What we need, then, is much shorter campaigns, and no private money. Candidates have limited time to make their best arguments, and all they get is that argument, for which they have the same opportunity as do their competition. When I say limited time, the UK had an election in the very recent past. From the time the dissolution of government was announced until the new election was less than a month. Either you've been successful at making a compelling argument, or you already have a positive reputation, or maybe the voters just want someone new. But it just doesn't take that long, or cost that much.
As for cost, my proposal is zero. Coming back to Reagan, or before him, we know that our government can care about the public first, and demand that broadcast media provide emergency alerts, for example, for free. Broadcast media would not like to provide political advertising for free, because they make a great deal of their income that way. And we all know how marginal is their income. But if we could get Americans to pay taxes, especially those Americans with way more money and income than they need, or for which they have any use anyway, then the government can pay the broadcast media a fair, not inflated, rate.
My own theory, which I might or might not have shared in the past, is that anyone who wants to run for office qualifies on day 1. From then on, each candidate has to provide an increasing number of signatures of voters who want to see them stay in the race. We're not talking about the candidate for whom they plan to vote, but just someone who inspires enough to lead voters to want them in the race. As the number of required signatures, maybe every two weeks, for example, gets larger, and not enough voters see the value of a given candidate in the race any more, then that candidate is dropped. At the end, we might have one candidate. Or 15. And whoever is left is who goes on the ballot. No private money, and no mind-numbingly protracted campaigns. Candidates no longer get paid for, bought, and owned (their constituency really is the public!), and the public can go to the trouble to think seriously about what's best for them and the country. Just for a limited amount of time.
