How Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Citizens United

[xchrom]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/how-dems-learned-love-super-pacs-citizens-united



Four years ago, in his inaugural State of the Union address, President Obama famously shamed the Supreme Court's five conservative justices for their decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The court, Obama said, "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections." Democratic lawmakers, activists, operatives, and donors piled on, condemning the ruling as "scandalous," a "disaster," and "bad for American democracy." When a subsequent court decision, nodding to Citizens United, opened the door to super-PACs, a new breed of political committee that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash, Obama branded them "a threat to our democracy."

The Obama of 2010 might not recognize the Democratic Party of 2014.

In the intervening years, Obama and his fellow Democrats embraced big-money politics. Democrats formed super-PACs to defend the presidency, gain seats in the House of Representatives, and preserve their majority in the Senate. Obama is the first president in history to utilize a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) group, which can accept unlimited sums from anonymous donors, to promote his policy agenda. (Organizing for Action, the president's nonprofit, chose to voluntarily disclose its 2013 donors.) And with an eye toward the 2016 presidential race, Democratic operatives have gone to work for various super-PACs mounting a campaign-in-waiting for presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton. If Democrats hate Citizens United on paper, they love it in practice.

As president, Obama has acted on campaign pledges to crack down on Washington's revolving door by restricting lobbyists' access to his administration and banning lobbyists from bundling donations for his reelection campaign. His administration posts the White House visitor logs, gathers government ethics rules online, and advocated for the passage of the DISCLOSE Act, which would've increased transparency of politically active nonprofit groups but failed after Republicans repeatedly filibustered it. White House spokesman Eric Schultz says Obama has taken "historic steps to reduce the corrosive influence of money in politics." The administration's goal, Schultz added, "has been to reduce the influence of special interests in Washington—which we've done more than any administration in history."

[Scuba]

1. "Obama has acted ... by restricting lobbyists' access to his administration"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76304.html

The President Obama-Jamie Dimon saga

... Dimon made at least 16 trips to the White House and met at least three times with Obama ...

Yes, it seems he has cut out the middleman lobbyists.

[Laelth]

2. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[ProSense]

3. Many states

"How Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Citizens United"

...are pushing Congress to address the issue.

<...>

Sixteen states have formally petitioned Congress to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling—which frees corporations to spend as much as they choose to influence elections, and which continued a process of striking down federal, state and local campaign-finance reforms. These states have formally recognized that votes should define the electoral process, not dollars. Groups such as Free Speech for People, Move to Amend, Public Citizen, Common Cause and People for the American Way have made tremendous progress at the local and state levels—working with limited resources and shamefully scant media coverage. They’ve won support from Democrats, Republicans and independents in state legislatures across the country, and they’ve organized and won statewide and local referendum votes. “In just three years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, we have come one third of the way to amending the US Constitution to reclaim our democracy and to ensure that people, not corporations, shall govern in America,” says John Bonifaz, co-founder and executive director of Free Speech For People.

But there is still much work to do. The real “critical mass” moment will not come until current numbers double and the movement is in range of the number of states that would be required to approve an amendment: thirty-eight. Roughly 100 House members have sponsored or cosponsored amendment proposals, as have key senators such as Vermont independent Bernie Sanders and Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown. Getting more states to formally demand action will cause more congressional buy-in for this necessary reform.

- more -
http://www.thenation.com/blog/177753/democratic-vistas-2014-five-reforms-make-our-politics-matter

From last October: