(a) Votes may determine the winner, but it seems that in practice, you will not get enough votes to matter without many millions of dollars. Money isn’t all that it takes - Hillary spent more - but if you don’t have the money, you are going nowhere. This is hugely corrupting. Political advertisements should honestly probably be made illegal, in the same way that cigarette advertisements are not legal. News about politics should be conveyed by impartial third parties, in the same way that news about pharmaceutical drugs used to be conveyed through research papers that underwent peer review, not paid advertisements.
(b) Yes. It is corrupting. Unfortunately for the democrats, single payer is not considered to be in the financial interests of wealthy people. Some wealthy people support it, yes, but it’s a vast increase in financial liability for the Federal government. Of course, it would give the government the clout to force medical costs back to earth - possibly reducing government liability in the long run.
So the actual electoral system is 2 groups of wealthy people battling it out. One side is hugely better for regular people, but has less wealthy people in it’s corner, so it ends up being at best evenly matched, and this season, is the loser…
My criticism of the current campaign finance system is that it is unfair and inefficient, but there’s plenty of good, well-meaning candidates for office who are not corrupted by it… they are just stuck with a shitty system. And IMHO, once we have elected someone to do the job of running the country, they should not be distracted with having to use so much time panhandling for large amount of money.
Erhm, so it seems like you’re saying that the Sanders supporters [mainly them, but some others too] who don’t want the Democratic Party to help any liberal candidate who isn’t in support of single-payer are indeed corrupting, but it is your kind of corruption, so it ain’t so bad. Am I missing something?
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me if you think that a Republican money advantage is the reason things are “even.” In Presidential races since 2004, according to opensecrets.org, Democratic nominees have raised $3.164 billion and Republican nominees have raised $2.269 billion. On what planet must we be to look at those numbers and come to the conclusion that the money fight is in any way fair?
Yes. The definition of the word corruption. In common usage, it is considered a negative. If I were trying to defend “my” kind of corruption, I would have used different words. I agree entirely that corruption is both evil and should be stopped, with that policy applying to all sides of the political spectrum.
I have the impression that right now the Republicans have a money advantage, since they are for policies commonly accepted by the rich. I do not accept your cherry picked data, we need to find total funding, for both political parties, for a fair comparison.(that is, executive plus legislative plus judicial, for all branches and all levels of government, or as close to this as possible with available data) The Presidential race is not a good choice, and you cherry picked a start date that happens to involve 1 election a republican was certain to win, and 3 elections where statistically a democrat was going to win. Generally, political donors like to back winners.
Given that the Republicans have majority control of all goverment, I’d willing to wager than in fact they do have a total funding advantage right now.
What informs that impression though? I mean, Hillary had more campaign money than Trump (for all the good it did her in the end), and from what I recall it’s a toss-up in the local election wrt funding, but Dems are certainly not being buried under the mass of Republican funding.
If you have other data feel free to share. I think that many Dems ASSUME that Republicans have the most funding because Rich White People™, but from what I’ve seen that isn’t the case (obviously if we are talking local or state elections it’s going to vary).
Note that the Koch Brothers also spend large sums to fund “think tanks” to promote their “ideas.” FoxNews is a billion-dollar operation almost dedicated to promoting right-wing lies. (Admittedly ad revenue is more important to Fox shareholders than electing liars.)
This leads us away from OP’s topic, but the digression into comparing statutory campaign budgets ignores the huge advantage gained, especially given present dysfunctions and nearly-brainwashed citizens, by the right-wing’s cut-throat tactics and eagerness to lie.
It was my impression that during virtually the entire election Trump was barely considered a Republican at all. He wasn’t favored by the powers that be (were?) and pretty much certainly wasn’t first in line at the funding teat. The amount of money he got to campaign with wouldn’t really be representative of the total pool of republican money available.
Hard to see how they are being bribed to do what they have been saying they were gonna do since the legislation passed and have tried 50 some-odd times to do since…
This is one of those posts that make me wonder why I bother posting any facts at all.
You have literally nothing backing up your suspicions except that I haven’t answered ever single one of your data calls, so you strongly insinuate that my stats are corrupt because they don’t fit your bias.
Had I reported that Republican presidential campaigns had outspent Democratics campaigns by a 3:2 ratio, would you have instantly agreed with that statistic? Or would you have demanded data on every single election in the United States over some undefined period of time?
Come to think of it, I’m not sure why I ask rhetorical questions in this forum, either.
To point it out carefully, my OpenSecrets link in post no. 003 shows many stats for different purposes on that page alone, presidential races, congressional races, by party, by race and how much was spent by each.
All agree the two main parties spend almost equally.
They have other pages going into the sources of the monies, the donors etc… So, I mean…
It’s not biased to suspect a fix being in if one party is in favor of policies that benefit 99% of people, the other wants parties that benefit 1% of the people, and the 1% have more money available to spend than basically all the money held by the 99%.
It’s basic reasoning and math. If you are not making at least $200,000 a year, you probably can’t keep up with your COBRA premiums if you are fired or laid off. Since the Republicans are just a couple votes short of removing any alternative to employer funded health insurance, you’re an idiot if you support repealing the ACA. Yet, weirdly, a political party seems to be all for it. Wonder why. Maybe it’s because of propaganda. Why would there be more propaganda supporting the GOP if they don’t have more money to spend?
Or one party is in favour of policies that benefit 25% of people, and the other wants policies that benefit 10% of people, and the richest 1% is split one third D and one third R.
And whoever pays the pipers they don’t buy the games and results, they just buy the players.
As for why American people support right-wing policies, maybe it’s not that they are propagandized, or racist, or stupid: Maybe they are just very right-wing themselves.
(a) suspecting something to be true based on evidence is not bias. I do not “believe” this, I can be persuaded, I simply have reached a reasonable conclusion based on evidence. The evidence is tens of millions of people voting for political propaganda that is not in their own best interests. And parroting it if you ask them about it. Other hypotheses include widespread stupidity, widespread racism, senility due to advanced age, widespread ignorance of basic economics, or democrats simply offering an unappealing message.
(b) Haven’t seen a cite for the dark money, or unlisted campaign contributions made by “independent” Super PACs advertising on behalf of their preferred candidate. If there’s a difference, it would be there. (by definition. We’ve accounted for all the above the board money. Ok, it’s equal. If there’s a difference, it’s the off the books money)
The OP asserted nothing. They quoted a source (and thus cited a claim) but then asked if it was true or not.
But, more importantly, reality doesn’t bend because of rules. Whether this is true or not is completely independent of whether people followed the proper procedure.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. If he made a gratuitous claim, then you can say the claim was gratuitous. But you can’t also make a gratuitous claim. Then you’re just as wrong as they are.
But, again, it wasn’t gratuitous. It’s a cited claim that was doubted then brought up for discussion.
Except you didn’t do that on your claim, while the OP did.
You have these rules. Why don’t you follow them?
Also, we have objective facts that people will die. No one is deciding what is in someone’s best interest. We’re discussing a Republican plan that will result in people dying versus keeping the plan that won’t.
Unlike what certain Trump officials say, objective facts do exist.
This argument is weak. If I see someone hitting their own head with a hammer, I can evaluate their action and in fact prove pretty conclusively that they are not acting in their own best interests.
If being alive and not bankrupt is universally considered to be in the best interest of someone, then I can systematically prove that affordable health coverage is in the best interests of every U.S. citizen who is not so rich they can’t pay a million dollar medical bill in cash.
I could work out each and every step of the proof, if you want to see it, I will.
Given the undeniable proof, that’s where you end up wondering if it’s just that people are stupid in general, or they are being fooled by convincing propaganda, or they are just ignorant about basic economics, or they have a false belief that they will be rich enough to pay a million dollar bill in the very near future, or they believe they are never going to be fired or laid off, or if they believe that god will prevent any such million dollar injuries to their person.