I don't think the problem with money in politics is that it wins elections. It's that it buys access

[Recursion]

Somebody posted "elections should be about votes, not money" (or something close to that). But elections are about votes, and money doesn't seem as effective at getting people to vote as people think (this year's mid-terms, the most expensive in history, also had the lowest turnout. Though I've also seen claims that negative ads only ever depress turnout, so in that sense money can buy turnout depression I guess).

We're possibly looking at a 1 trillion dollar election cycle in 2016, which is itself staggering. (Hell, just call it "stimulus" -- for that matter, the money spent trying to unseat and/or defend Scott Walker was bigger than the budget hole that started the whole thing.) But if 2014 is representative, we won't be outspent by very much (and if 2012 is representative, we will raise and spend a lot more money than the GOP will).

Before Citizens United, a filmmaker couldn't legally make a film about Hillary Clinton if it was too close to an election. I'm not sure that that was ever really the problem (the film was a hack hatchet job, but not the problem). And I don't think the problem is that Koch money is going to flood the airwaves and make people vote Republican. I think the problem is that politicians who have to spend 75% of their working hours raising money wind up -- surprise, surprise -- spending 75% of their working hours with people who have a lot of money. For that matter most industries and even companies play both sides of the political fence, which gets to my point. If most of your job involves asking people who move money around to move some money in your direction, that's what you start to think of as normal and important, rather than the more productive economic activities most of us do. It's not about influencing elections as much as it's about influencing politicians.

Actually there's a silver lining there about Citizens United in that the unlimited money it raises has to have a firewall between it and candidates. If the big money movers decide that they do want to influence elections more than they want to influence politicians, that could mean less time fundraising for individual pols (though, whom am I kidding, it would probably still mean more time to make up the difference).

Now, I don't want to take the "influencing politicians" line too far. Barney Frank once pointed out that in his decades in Congress doing nosecounts on votes, even in very hush hush private meetings, nobody ever thought "well I can't do this because it goes against my donors" but a ton of people said "this will alienate my district and I'll lose the next election". I don't think you can rise national politics without having the ability to take somebody's money and then screw him over anyways. The problem is more subtle than that: if your lunches, evenings, and weekends are spent hanging out with the 15%, that's how you start to see the world.

[delrem]

1. It's both. They're parts of the same whole.

[joshcryer]

2. I agree. But it's in the lobbying.

Lobbying is, in fact, one of the most strictly controlled aspects of politics, people don't really realize that lobbyists actually have to report every time that they sit down with a legislator over a meal, and even report who paid for the meal. Really.

The problem is that lobbyists can draft legislation and hand it over to a legislator, and the legislator can just sign off on it, that is patently insane. There's an article that legislators don't even read the legislation that they vote for, they just do it, after all their aides, law professionals, and whatnot have signed off on it.

So for lobbyists whatever they want can be sold, with glitz and glamor, and with all the good intent in the world. "We want to hire 500 people if you vote yes on X! You know if you vote no on Y it'll save 300 jobs!"

The legislators eat it up.

You know what the fix would be? Lobbyist babysitters. Every time a lobbyist wants to push for some view, there has to be a babysitter sitting there talking about it, a mediator, so that the legislator knows exactly what's happening.

Then, after that, the legislator has to sit down with the babysitter and actually read the legislation that they're supposed to vote on. Should solve a lot of problems there.

[renate]

3. "... that's how you start to see the world."

Even if there were no such thing as corruption (and there certainly is such a thing as corruption), most people who leave ordinary life behind to be courted and flattered and treated as if they were something special couldn't help but forget what life is like for the middle class, let alone what it's like for people just scraping by. It's not necessarily evil, it's just human nature.

"How they start to see the world..."--that's the problem even if they don't start out with any bad intent.