It has been said that money is at the root of all evil. Our political process requires so much money, upwards of $8 billion dollars for the most recent 2022 off-year election, that it is also rooted in evil. The evil arises from what is asked either subtly or overtly of the politicians by the wealthy individuals that contribute most of that campaign cash. In most cases, it is not representing the interests of the voters who elected them to their positions of influence, but the narrow interests of the wealthy donor class.
I vividly remember many years ago the lobbyist working for the Community Action Network explaining how the process works. He stated that when initially elected to Congress, all the major lobbying firms arrange a meeting with the newly elected Senator or House member and explain that they can be helpful in future campaign efforts by assisting them to raise millions of dollars for their campaign efforts, if they help them with a few of their clients’ priorities or they can help raise millions of dollars for their future opponents. Not all Senators or House members agree to these terms, but enough do because raising money for reelection efforts is a tedious and mind-numbing activity and getting assistance to raise millions is hard to pass up. This legalized form of bribery has been condoned for decades and the Supreme Court has decided a few cases that exacerbate this corrupt behavior. It is shameful that a government that intended to function by and for the people has been so corrupted that it is increasingly a government that functions by and for several thousand individuals with the most money.
The money required and spent largely to influence and often to manipulate the voting public is obscene. In 1996, the median fundraising for winning Senate campaigns was $5 million when adjusted for inflation. In 2018, it was $11 million. There is no end in sight to this incessant need for money to pay for the advertising devised by hired political strategists to portray their opponent as someone no one should ever vote for or to simply deceive and manipulate the voters into believing something grossly inaccurate about the virtues of their candidate. Typically, members of Congress schedule around a ten-hour workday, understandably that may be low and varies daily depending on the position and status of the Senator for House member. On average, four hours are spent on “call time” and another hour blocked off for “strategic outreach,” which includes fundraisers and press work. It is very important to understand that those required millions are very difficult, although not impossible (think Bernie Sanders), to raise with small donations from the average citizen. The call time spent by most Senators and House members is largely spent calling big money donors that can maximize their personal donations of a few thousand dollars each year, although contributing to some dark money Political Action Committee (PAC) is vitally important for big money donors to consider. Dark money has become the life blood of many political campaigns even though there is to be no connection between how dark money is used and how regular campaign funding is used; the compliance of this important requirement is dubious at best.
So, we have a political process that is corrupt and reliant on large amounts of money. A high percentage of the funding is used for media advertising, so in our world of consolidating media, those few media sources want to keep this gravy train going and do little to scrutinize candidates from a truly objective viewpoint. They allow spin, misdirection, and lying to be used by campaigns when they do attempt to inform the public about the policies, beliefs, and principles. Media doesn’t want to truly inform the public if truthful and objective reporting could result in lost advertising revenue. Very little is ever discussed in mainstream media about the several thousand very wealthy individuals and major corporations who have control of what is supposed to be government by and for the people. These several thousand big money donors that comprise the donor class have a very different perspective about what they want from government, and it does not coincide with what is in the best interest of society or anyone living day to day working for inadequate wages to simply survive what life throws at them on a daily basis.
Unless there is substantial tempering of the influence of money has on the US political process, over time the big money donor class will get their way and we may retain the remnants of a representative democracy without being a representative democracy. ND being a one-party state (the 2023 Legislative Assembly consists of 125 Republicans and 16 Democrats) is not a representative democracy because for all practical purposes, only one viewpoint, increasingly becoming more extreme, decides the fate of every ND citizen. The notion that over $8 billion was spent in the 2022 off-year election will likely mean in excess of $10 billion will be spent for the 2024 presidential year election. That obscene level of spending will result in the public being bombarded with media advertising. High priced political operatives will develop campaign strategies designed to manipulate and deceive voters. Way too many voters in the US are very ignorant of what is really happening in our country and are highly gullible to the lying, deception, and manipulation employed by many politicians to first get elected and subsequently be re-elected. Changing this very corrupt and dysfunctional political process will be a heavy lift because the big money pawns must be the ones that temper the influence on money when they are the ones using the money for their campaign efforts.
