Why Money Doesn't Matter As Much As Some Think in Politics

I've been arguing for years about Citizens United - and its lack of baneful influence on our political system.  Which is to say -  I think that big money has not distorted or disrupted our elections or political process.

The best example, until now, has been the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012.  Big money did everything it could to stop him.  But it couldn't erase Romney's thoughtless comment about the "47%" not mattering, and the video recording of that comment likely helped him lose the election. YouTube beat big money.

This year, Bernie Sanders is doing pretty well - explicitly denouncing the role of money in politics provided by corporate giants.   Clearly, if that money were so unstoppable in its influence, Sanders wouldn't be where he is today.

And a statistic just released today shows another way in which money has had little if any lasting influence in the 2016 Presidential campaign thus far.  As indicated in the chart, shown earlier on MSNBC, Jeb Bush has far and away spent the most per vote received by any GOP candidate - which means he has spent the most amount of money, and received the last in return in voter support. Conversely, Trump has spend the least - and his low expenditures have given him a second place finish in Iowa in a crowed field.



Clearly, then, money is not a decisive factor.  Social media are apparently more decisive.  In Trump's case, his domination of Twitter brought him to second place (and the fact that it was second, not first, shows that social media have their limits, too -  see here for more).

I've always thought that, as John Milton and Thomas Jefferson pointed out, when truth and falsity are given access in the marketplace of ideas, people will recognize the truth and vote their self-interests. This is where social media find their limits, too - human rationality can recognize a lie, or bombast such as Trump's, whether presented in a high-cost ad or in a no-cost Tweet.  But the advent of social media means that, regardless of how much money may be spent to the contrary, someone, somewhere, will be able to express a fact or a view closer to the truth.   And with the mass media picking up more from social media, that fact will sooner or later be broadcast to millions.

The Unheralded Lesson of Mayor Butt's Election for Citizens United

It's always nice, and a fact crucial to the growth of our knowledge, when an event in the real world answers a hotly debated issue.   We got such a fact last week, when Tom Butt was elected Mayor of Richmond, California. He spent about $50,000 on a mostly door-to-door campaign.   In contrast, his opponent was financed to the tune of $3,000,000 by Chevron Oil in a massive media and advertising campaign.    Indeed, Chervon's spending like Goliath in this race had been cited by many progressive pundits as their worst nightmare come true about the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, which held that corporations could contribute as much as they wanted in national elections, and the subsequent extension of this decision to local elections.

I'm a progressive, too, but I never had a problem with Citizens United, and in fact supported it as an important affirmation of the First Amendment, and its requirement that "Congress make no law ... abridging freedom of speech or press".   Opponents of Citizens United argue that the First Amendment protects the rights of people not corporations to communicate, and this set off a distracting discussion about whether corporations are people.   But that question misses the reality that communication is intrinsically a two-way street, with a receiver as well as a sender, and the First Amendment protects both parts of that equation from governmental interference or regulation.  What this means in plain English is that Americans have a right to receive information from anyone and everything - be it another person, a corporation, a bird chirping, a robot, or a tree falling in the forest. All of this comes under the public's right to know.

But what about the feared deleterious effect of big corporate spending on our elections, and therefore our democratic process?   I was never too concerned about that, either, because, like John Milton and Thomas Jefferson, I believe that human beings are fundamentally rational, able to separate truth from falsity, and make decisions that best serve their interests, most of the time.   And, indeed, I was glad that Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012 for at least two reasons.   First, as I said, I'm a progressive, and support most of his policies.   But, second, Obama's reelection showed that all the post-Citizens United spending on behalf of Republican candidates, including Romney, failed in its mission to unseat the President.

Still, one could argue that Obama is an anomaly, so charismatic a candidate that it didn't matter how much money his corporate-funded opponent - and already fabulously wealthy on his own - spent against Obama.   That's what makes the election of Mayor Butt so important. Impossibly overspent by Chevron Oil, Butt managed to win.    You could say Chrevon lost, with no ands, ifs, but a least one Butt about it.  (Ok, I had to be permitted at least one pun here.)

Progressives should be celebrating.  But I've seen little of that - at least, not for the right reasons. Rachel Maddow aptly cited Butt's election as a bright spot in the otherwise mostly grim election night last week.   But she failed to follow through on the logical import of Butt's election:  corporate spending need not buy elections.   Progressives can win, if we put up good candidates, who take courageous and clearly defined positions, and speak sense to the people.   Butt's election showed a packet of lies financed by millions of dollars loses to a statement of truth financed by just a sliver of that money.   In politics, money doesn't talk as loud as some thought.

Chris Hayes on Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously Tonight

No one needs another show to watch on Sunday night these days.  In addition to Mad Men and Game of Thrones, which I watch and regularly review, there's also The Good Wife and Turn, which I watch and sometimes review, and Mr. Selfridge, which I watch and enjoy and usually don't review, because enough is enough.   On the other hand, to paraphrase the Victorian poet Robert Browning, one's reach on TV should exceed one's grasp, or what's a DVR for?   And Years of Living Dangerously, whose third episode is on tonight, is also On Demand.

I'm looking forward to Chris Hayes' contribution to this high-tech broadside on the need to wake up to the dangers of global warming.  Just to be clear, though I think Hayes is one of the brightest and most cogent voices on television, I don't agree with everything he says.  For example, I'm not too worried about the apocalypse to democracy thought to be engendered by Citizens United, seeing as how Obama - whom I voted for twice, and strongly support - handily won reelection in 2012, or two years after that much derided Supreme Court decision.   This confirms to me, once again, that Milton and Jefferson were right that people are inherently rational and vote their best interests - now in the 21st century, regardless of the mega-bucks spent on political advertising.

But Hayes and James Cameron and the all-star cast both in front of and behind the camera in Years of Living Dangerously are completely right that we need to do something about what is going on in the climate around us.   Look, even if all the evidence that the world is slowly heating up is wrong, wouldn't we be better off having some control over our climate and the temperature of the world?  To say, as do some Republicans, that the climate is in God's hands, misses the point that God or natural selection or whatever brought us here left us with minds and the capacity not to just accept the natural world around us but improve it, for us,  and most living denizens of this planet.   Surely, we're better off now than in ancient Rome, with its average lifespan of 20-30 years (45-47 for those who made it to the age of 10) - a result of science and medicine and its invention and application via human mentality.

The Scientific Revolution in the Renaissance was borne on the wings of the printing press (as I detail in The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution).  Television in America, though it's had its moments with Nova and the original Carl Sagan Cosmos series and the reboot now on Fox, has by and large not risen to the task.   It's good to see Years of Living Dangerously and some of the best minds on the planet join the ranks.

Lesson #2 of Obama's Victory: Money Can't Buy Elections

If meta-lesson #1 of Obama's historic victory last night is that statisticians like Nate Silver know what they're doing - see Hats Off to Nate Silver  - then lesson #2 is surely that money doesn't buy elections.

I've been making this point as soon as my progressive colleagues got into an uproar about the Citizens United decision.  So what if corporations could vent their spleens and bank accounts and hundreds of millions of dollars in backing their favorite candidates?  That wouldn't move me, in the slightest, to vote for them if I didn't already support them or their political positions.  Would it move you?

I think not.  Neither did Thomas Jefferson, who thought that as long as there was some truth out there in the playing field, human beings would be able to recognize it.  This came from Milton's Aeropagetica, and was a very profound and accurate view of human nature and mentality.  Applied to politics, it means that people can separate truth from falsity, and vote their self-interests.

Romney had an op-ed in The New York Times that said "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt".  True, he didn't write that headline, but neither did he howl in protest when the Times published his article that way.  And so, when he later denied that that was his intention - when he claimed he actually loved cars and wanted to save the American auto industry - anyone who was not already strongly in support of Romney, and was wearing blinders, saw right through that lie.   Jefferson and Milton called it right.  People, presented with a lie and the truth, saw through the lie.

The fulfillment of Jefferson's vision does not mean that money has no impact on elections.  It obviously can buy ads, and hire campaign workers.  But, in the end, as long as the truth is available in any corner of the country, it will get out.  Whether via a waiter who captures on his smartphone Romney's professed disdain for the 47%, or an op-ed in the New York Times, or Romney's statements all over the map, this way and that, about women's rights, the truth will come out.

So let the corps spend their money.   We don't need or want the government to regulate them or counter  their propaganda.  We can do it ourselves, jus fine, as we did last night.