Campaign Funding

Recent liberal outrage over campaign funding, which seems to have been triggered by Obama himself, is intriguing to me on several levels. It started, apparently, with his comment at a campaign rally where he accused Republicans of outspending Democrats by a 2:1 margin, and said that large amounts of money came “from foreign sources.” He asked the crowd if they wanted overseas corporations determining the outcome of their local elections, and they responded with boos and cries of, “No.”

Either Obama is an idiot or that crowd is. What determines the outcome of an election is the votes of the people, not the amount of money spent or where it comes from. If those votes are bought and paid for by advertising, that is the fault of the voters, not the fault of those providing the money.

We know that Obama is not an idiot. He knows that elections are, in fact, bought and paid for. For the most part, whoever has the most money wins. He eschewed public funding and outspent McCain by a 2:1 margin in 2008 and became President, and now he is telling voters that it is not okay for Republicans to outspend Democrats by that same 2:1 margin. He’s not very ethical or honest in that pitch, perhaps, but he’s certainly not an idiot.

He’s outraged that the money might be coming from “foreign sources.”
Who cares where the money is coming from? The problem is not the source of the money; the problem is that the money is buying the election. He’s perfectly okay with that as long as it’s Democratic money buying the election for Democratic candidates.

And at the same time that liberals are fulminating about “foreign money” influencing our elections, they are urging Democrats nationwide to contribute to local races for Representative.

Interesting. All of the screaming about “foreign money” influencing our elections, and yet liberals also want money from 50 states to influence a local election. Why is money from, say, New Jersey not considered “foreign money” in the election for representative in, say, Arizona? Should not the people and businesses in Arizona be free of New Jersey influence in its electoral process for local representation?

Remember that those people in New Jersey know absolutely nothing about the local candidate other than that he is a member of a given party. He could be in all respects a complete and utter idiot and completely unsuitable to the local voters in every respect. He could espouse one or more policies which are anathema to a huge majority of the local voters regardless of party. Party-line donors 3000 miles away would know nothing of these things.

And nobody seems to care that our elections are determined by money.

Chris Matthews discussed this topic on Hardball with David Corn and Chris Cillizza for something like fifteen minutes, talking over each other and shouting, and it never occurred to any of them to mention the corrosive effect of money itself on our elections. All they did was fulminate about the source of the money and the political fallout resulting from various politicians’ discussions of it.

I remember, many years ago, an interview with Jimmy Carter after he had just returned from monitoring an election in a nation with an emerging democracy. He was asked if he would be able to “certify” an election in the United States, and he said that he would not because of the role that money played in our electoral process. That role has increased exponentially since he said that.