We’ve pretty much established that, except with a few jurisdictions where the candidates are so embedded with their constituents that they seem invulnerable, a candidate for a significant state office or just about any federal office simply cannot compete with the massive contributions that have permeated the country post Citizens United without his or her own massive SuperPac support. That candidates cannot have direct control of these mega-funds only complicates the process.
Thus, in effect, those creating and funding these campaign money machines control the messages, and if a candidate wants that endorsement money (needs like air!), he/she pretty much is stuck with the message – like it or not. The net effect of such sponsored and biased support is no longer candidates running against the platforms of other candidates. It is SuperPac messages, bought and paid for usually by super-rich players with strong personal agendas at stake, against other SuperPac messages. And since so much of the funding is coming from rich players with low taxes and limited regulation on their minds, it is no surprise that the bulk of the SuperPac money is coming from the extreme right in support of the GOP’s most conservative candidates.
Whatever the candidate’s personal beliefs or positions might be are no longer determinative. They are being bought and paid for by the big contributors, in what used to be a completely illegal process. Technically, it still is. Officially, you cannot pay (even if you call it a campaign contribution) a candidate with the expectation of a particular result (“pay for play”). That little gambit can get both donor and candidate free room and board at a federal penitentiary. But the Supreme Court has legalized the effective practice of “pay for play” by literally creating a competitive field where candidates desperately needing campaign support from SuperPacs reluctantly espouse the SuperPac’s message as if their own… even if it is too extreme or not reflective of their personal beliefs. This little Supreme Court decision is a hallmark of a plutocracy and most certainly not of a representative democracy.
Some of these mega-messages are downright weird, produced in whatever style the SuperPac prefers, occasionally truly amateurish and embarrassing. “‘It’s billionaires fighting with billionaires — Tom Steyer fighting with the Koch brothers,’ said David Kochel, a veteran Iowa political consultant who has informally advised Ernst. ‘People cannot relate to what they’re talking about in that ad. It’s drawn up by people who’ve spent their entire lives in Washington and just don’t get what the real experiences and lives of people are. It’s so completely out of touch and so far-fetched that it’ll never work. It’s a huge waste of money.’” Washington Post, August 5th.
Whatever the candidates’ concerns, and even when the message really makes them wince, everyone knows the playing field has changed, and the candidate is even prohibited from trying to influence the message. “Super PACs and other independent groups are barred from directly coordinating with candidates. In this election cycle, they have spent upwards of $140 million on House and Senate races… ‘Super PACs are, at this point in the election, the majority advertiser,’ said Jonathan Symonds, executive vice president of Ace Metrix, a Silicon Valley-based firm that analyzes advertising. ‘Increasingly, because of the velocity of new [ads] and the number of different entities that are in these races, it is hard to know what is effectively and ineffectively conveying an issue.’” The Post.
The results are obvious. Elected officials increasingly dig in their heels at major issues where a few short years ago, they would have found a workable compromise. They do not want to offend their SuperPac sponsors. Gridlock and killing the ability to legislate is the price we seem to have to pay under these new and vile campaign finance legal mandates. Anything to get financial support to get elected! Even as the polls show how dissatisfied people are with Congress.
A new poll says it all, as summarized by the August 5th Huffington Post: “A majority 51 percent of Americans disapprove of their own congressional representative, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released [August 5th]. That's the first time in the quarter-century history of the poll that the disapproval rating has risen above 50 percent, outstripping even the 47 percent who disapproved during last year's government shutdown.
“Terrible ratings for Congress, which has an average approval rating of under 12 percent, are nothing new (a recent survey asking Americans how they'd fix Congress prompted such helpful suggestions as ‘lock them in a room together until they get along’ and ‘well placed dynamite’).
“In the past, though, Americans have tended to feel more warmly toward their own district's representative than toward the legislative branch as a whole. Lately, however, that number too has taken a dive in national polling.
“That still doesn't mean that most incumbents' jobs are at risk. In the June before Republicans took back the House in 2010, 40 percent of Americans told Gallup their representative didn't deserve to be re-elected, yet 85 percent of members seeking re-election held onto their seats anyhow.”
It’s morally reprehensible, contrary to any notion of representative democracy, and most certainly does not make the American political system a model for any other nation to follow. It deprives our elected officials of their own voice or even the voice of the masses of voters who elected them, requiring those who have sipped at the SuperPac trough to proselytize their contributors’ messages. Rule of the few at the expense of the many. The new American way.
I’m Peter Dekom, and we have more reasons these days to be ashamed at our political processes than to be proud of them.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment