How money corrodes our public discourse

The argument we're used to hearing is that the tremendous amount of money in politics these days corrodes our politicians. There is obviously a lot of truth to that.

But lately I've been seeing how it also corrodes our public discourse. That happens when an argument is made that people disagree with and the response is to assume that the person making it doesn't really believe what they're saying but has simply been influenced by money. It happens ALL THE TIME. I'd invite you to begin to notice how often.

While I've been aware of this for awhile, I was motivated to write about it when immigration activists actually pulled it on none other than Delores Huerta because she suggested that they avoid criticizing President Obama for delaying action on immigration until the end of this year.

On the whole, Obama’s Latino defenders all have a financial stake in his regime. They are all recipients of largesse either from the administration directly or through his party or allied private foundations. They belong to the corrupt patronage system and have gladly accepted their proverbial role as house peons who run to save the master’s burning house faster than the master himself. The most immoral observation about their behavior is the lack of transparency about their personal moneyed interests and positions as they implicitly defend massive deportations of historic dimension.

That literally makes me sick. I don't personally know Ms. Huerta. But I know of her legacy with the Latino community. And when/if you decide to go after her with garbage like that - you better have something more than rage to back it up!!!

The fact of the matter is, these activists and Ms. Huerta disagree about how to respond to President Obama's delay. But rather than discuss those differing arguments, these folks decided to simply trash her and claim she has personal moneyed interests that drive her opinion.

We see this happen all the time. The other place its popping up a lot lately is from the people who are mad at AG Eric Holder for not prosecuting Wall Street. Rather than researching reasons for his decisions, they simply claim that it was all about Wall Street money and patronage. All you need to know, these folks claim, is that he worked for big corporations at one time. There...that's proof. It reminds me of the kind of arguments the tea partiers make (i.e., he palled around with terrorists). As an alternative, they might actually address the reasons an expert in the field - Jed Lakoff - outlined. Of course that would take time and thought. You might also have to challenge some of your own assumptions about Holder. Its much easier to claim that he was simply bought off.

It could be that then-Mayor Cory Booker made his inept remarks about investment firms during the 2012 election cycle because he was bought off by them. Or it could be that he was very aware of the fact that thousands of working and middle class employees of his city depend on them for their pension and retirement funds.

It could be that Sen. Mary Landrieu has been bought off by the oil companies that operate in Louisiana. Or it could be that she is aware that thousands of her constituents depend on their work for those companies to put food on their table and a roof over their heads.

When we simply jump to the former argument in each of those cases, we fail to get to the issues that underly the latter. In other words, when we make one group of people (bankers, oil companies) the "enemy" that needs to be destroyed, we fail to see the interconnectedness that will lead to unintended consequences. And those most often fall on "the least of these" that we, as liberals, claim to care about.

The truth is that - whether we like it or not - money plays a powerful role in all of our lives and the decisions we make. I'll just take a moment here to recommend that you read one of the best books I've ever come across about that subject: The Soul of Money by  Lynne Twist. While we need to keep working to limit the influence of money in our politics, we shouldn't give it more power than it actually has. Because that robs us of the kind of conversations in which we need to engage.

A lazy media once again misses how politics has changed

Today the media pundits are tripping over themselves to tell us what Cantor's primary defeat means for the future of national politics. But one word of caution about listening to their prognostications: these are the very same people who never saw this one coming. At some point we have to question their predictive capacities. Unless/until they are willing to do a little self-examination to uncover why they were so wrong, we should take their current machinations with one HUGE grain of salt.

I've been hesitant to say this outright, but I think one of the biggest reasons they get so much wrong is that too many of these pundits are lazy. Its much easier (and more conducive to lucrative linkbait) to simply run with the latest hysteria craze created by the right wingnuts. Over the last few years we've watched them become consumed with everything from presidential birth certificates to literally buying wingnut lies about an American POW before we have the facts. When it comes time for an election, they are quick to point out that American voters STILL say that job creation is their number one concern. And yet they spend all their time running after fake scandals....because its easy.

Its also easy to spend countless hours talking/writing about the perceived inadequacies of the current occupant of the White House. While they wring their hands about whether or not his unfavorables will impact the future of the Democratic Party, they are quick to dismiss the civil war brewing in the Republican Party once a couple of establishment candidates fended off primary challenges from tea partiers. What?! You mean we have to also cover 535 members of Congress? That's too much work!

There are HUGE tectonic shifts happening in our politics these days. Some of them were highlighted in this Cantor/Brat race - such as the diminishing role of money in politics (apparently Cantor outspent Brat 25:1 and still lost). Grassroots movements are gaining momentum on both the left and the right as people organize and inform themselves in ways that aren't tied to traditional media outlets. That's actually how a mostly unknown Senator Barack Obama surprised everyone with his defeat of the Democratic establishment candidate Hillary Clinton back in 2008.

And yet most of our media and pundit class haven't altered their assumptions about how our politics works these days. They're still using the old models that rely on money and top-down control. To understand what is happening and provide some value-added in their political prognostications, these folks are going to have to get off their asses and out of the D.C. bubble with a big dose of curiosity about what the hell is happening out here. Until they do that, they'll continue to get a lot of things wrong and wind up surprised by the likes of everyone from Brat to Obama.

Not buying the hysteria or the cynicism

During his speech on voting rights a few days ago, President Obama said something that we should all take a minute to absorb.

If your strategy depends on having fewer people show up to vote, that’s not a sign of strength, that’s a sign of weakness.

Wait a minute! Did he just suggest that the Republican Party is weak? Yes mam, he sure did. But, you might ask, how can he say that when they've managed to obstruct almost everything he's tried to do for the last four years and the pundits are predicting bad news for Democrats in the 2014 midterms?

I'd suggest two reasons for it. First of all, you have to be someone who sees the long game in order to understand what he's saying. If you are addicted to the 24 hour hysteria-inducing media, you might miss it.

Interestingly enough, one person who has recently shown that he gets it is Markos at Daily Kos. His latest is titled: Liberalism has won, which is why conservatives do what they do. In it he points out that Republicans have basically lost their "culture wars" and that the rise of economic populism has the billionaires so scared they've taken to calling us Nazis. If you think of it in terms of the stages of grief, the current battles inside the Republican Party are between those who are in the denial stage (Sarah Palin), those in the anger stage (Ted Cruz) and those who are ready to bargain (Chamber of Commerce).

But Markos nails it when he points out that we've still got work to do.

We certainly have won the battle of ideas. But power isn't just about ideas. It's about wrestling the institutional levers of government from the retrogrades. Those entrenched economic and conservative interests wield power via the Supreme Court, through gross gerrymandering, through voter suppression efforts. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us.

That brings us to the second reason why President Obama defines the Republican Party as weak...he still believes in the democratic process.

James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner believed so strongly that change was possible they were willing to lay down their lives for it. The least you can do is take them up on the gift that they have given you. Go out there and vote. You can make a change. You do have the power.

The cynics among us are suggesting the end of democracy - especially since the latest Supreme Court ruling on campaign financing. I have to admit that there have been times in my past that I've gone there. But that all changed for me on November 4, 2008. As President-Elect Barack Obama said that night:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

The old cynic in me says that's corny. But the realist says that I had just watched a grassroots small donor-funded campaign beat both the establishment Democrats (in the primary) and Republicans (in the general election). Now we've seen it happen twice. The second time around, all the big money Karl Rove could put his hands on after Citizens United opened the floodgates couldn't defeat the will of the Obama coalition in the voting booth.

So as we watch the white male patriarchy lash out in its death throes and speculate about what that means for the future of the Republican Party, I'm not going to take my eyes off the prize by getting caught up in either hysteria or cynicism. That's because I can see the long game and I still believe in the democratic process. Here's what that looks like:

For now decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

The changing role of money in politics

For both liberals and conservatives, a common refrain we hear when a political battle is lost is that we can blame the role of money in politics. We've seen ample reason for this conclusion in the past. For example, when it comes to presidential elections we've seen the amount of money raised for candidates go from $162 million in 1980 to $2.3 billion in 2012. Of course with the SCOTUS' Citizen's United ruling, about $550 million of the 2012 total came from outside groups (ie, SuperPACs).

But I'm here to suggest that it might be time to challenge the conventional thinking about the role of money in politics. Things are changing fast in both political parties and technology is playing a BIG role in altering the landscape.

When it comes to the changes in political parties, Barack Obama's campaigns have ushered in a death blow to traditional thinking about fundraising. In the past candidates have relied on big donors to fund their endeavors. But President Obama showed that small donors in large numbers can beat that system.

In order to understand how that's done, its important to know that, when it comes to individual campaigns, donors are limited to being able to contribute $2,600 individually. When the relatively small number of people who can give that much have done so, they are finished with that particular campaign and have to look to other means of financial support. But when you mobilize millions of people to give $25 or $50 or $100, they can continue to contribute over the course of the campaign until they reach that $2,600 limit.

This is exactly how the Obama campaign was able to blow Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Mitt Romney's campaigns out of the water with the amount of money they raised. For example, in 2012 Obama raised $715 million to Romney's $443 million.

Of course Romney evened that out with outside funding where big donors can contribute an unlimited amount. In 2012, that meant over $400 million spent on behalf of Romney to $130 million for Obama. An awful lot of that outside funding was raised by SuperPACs controlled by Karl Rove. You may have read that big Republican donors were pretty angry with him because all their money didn't seem to buy them much of anything.

To understand why all of Rove's money didn't matter much in the end, you have to start with the reality that the only thing money can provide for those outside groups is to purchase media and direct marketing appeals. When it comes to grassroots activities for candidates, that money has to come from individual campaigns (where donors are limited to $2,600).

Money spent on media and direct marketing is an attempt to influence voters. But it can't be successful if voters aren't paying attention. And that's where all the advances in technology come into play. When it comes to direct marketing, the reality is that people are flooded with those kinds of things via snail mail or email. Most of us have become immune to all that and have systems in place to discard it all.

But technology is having an even bigger impact on the role of media in political campaigns. The most common way money is spent in that arena is on television ads. The first blow to the effectiveness of that kind of spending came with the proliferation of remote controls for TVs. Rather than sit through commercials, we started channel surfing. Then came commercial-less pay TV. And finally...streaming. One of the most important trends that few people are talking about was recently reported on Business Insider: Cord-Cutters and the Death of TV. Take a look at what is happening with cable TV subscribers.

This trend will likely continue as more and more people recognize all of the options to traditional television that are available. And with that, big advertising buys on television for campaigns will become even more meaningless. 

I believe we are at a crossroads when it comes to the role of money in politics and that it is the opposite of what the doom-and-gloomers about Citizen's United have been warning us about. All the money in the world that Karl Rove can raise is no match for the innovations in grassroots campaigning that President Obama demonstrated, coupled with the opportunities afforded us via new media. The question in front of both we the people and our political candidates of the future is whether or not we see what's happening and take advantage of this opportunity. 

Beinart understands the role of millennials but not the Obama coalition

I can't say that I have always agreed with Peter Beinart on politics, but a few years ago he took a big picture look at the swings of the political spectrum in one of the best pieces of analysis I've ever read. He's just written another important article in which he attempts to make a case for the emerging "new new left." Once again he makes some important points that many pundits are missing. But there are a couple of big gaping holes in his analysis this time.

Beinart's main point is that up until recently, our politics have been defined by the Reagan/Clinton years. Reagan set the tone with his "government isn't the solution, its the problem," and Clinton solidified that with his ascent to big business, triangulation and suggestion that "the era of big government is over."

Where Beinart gets it right is to suggest that that old frame is over for the millennial generation. But he goes on to focus only on the part about their opposition to the 1%ers in big business and erroneously suggests that President Obama has simply carried on with that part of the Clinton legacy.

It is true that the President didn't use the financial crisis that was underway when he came into office to simply tear down Wall Street as many on the left hoped he would. One can make the case that doing so would have caused even bigger chaos in the world economy and ultimately hurt the already struggling poor and middle class more than they were at the time. But let's leave that argument for another day.

Does the President's failure to go the direction many liberals were suggesting mean he bought into the Clinton legacy of appeasing corporate interests in our political process? Beinart suggests that it does. And yet further down in the article as he's describing the process for the emergence of the "new new left," he points out how Howard Dean initially changed the calculus of political campaigns and Obama eventually succeeded where Dean failed.

...he [Dean] established a template for toppling a Democratic frontrunner: inspire young voters, raise vast funds via small donations over the Web, and attack those elements of Clintonian orthodoxy that are accepted by Democratic elites but loathed by liberal activists on the ground.

In 2008, that became the template for Barack Obama.

The main reason Clinton bowed to corporate interests is that he and the DLC calculated that the only way to avoid another overwhelming loss like the one the Democrats suffered in the 1984 presidential election was to get access to corporate funds for political campaigns (anyone else old enough to remember the Clinton fundraising scandals that emerged as a result? If not, I have two words for you..."Lincoln bedroom.")

What Dean started and Obama finished was to prove that those vast amounts of funds that could be raised via small donations could beat the stranglehold big business had on our political process. Not only did he end the Clinton legacy in that regard, he did so by beating that very same Clinton machine in the process. That allowed President Obama to make pragmatic decisions about Wall Street during the great recession rather than become beholden to them for his political survival.

But an even bigger hole in Beinart's analysis is that he sees the millennial generation confined to their opposition to corporate interests. In doing so, of course he trots out that OWS was comprised mostly of millennias. But what he misses is that OWS appealed almost exclusively to white millenials. At an earlier point in the article, even Beinart has to accede that is not a true representation.

But among Millennials, there are fewer white, Christian non-immigrants to rouse. Forty percent of Millennials are racial or ethnic minorities.

Beinart's big example of the emergent "new new left" is de Blasio's victory in the New York mayoral primary this week. He sees it primarily through the lens of a battle over economic policies. While he makes a casual reference to de Blasio rejection of "stop and frisk" (but fails to even address Bloomberg's racist remarks about de Blasio's family), he doesn't tie it to the idea that millenials of color (and the issues that are primary to them) will have an impact on the "new new left."

Leading in to the 2016 presidential race, Beinart suggests that Elizabeth Warren could pose a challenge to Hillary Clinton and capture this "new new left" due to her strong record of challenging Wall Street and income inequality. This continues the assumption that the issues that are important to black and brown millennials are the same as those articulated by white millennials via OWS. Of course that has almost always been the assumption of white liberals in this country. We've been able to get away with that for decades and so it comes as no surprise that Beinart continues to do so.

I would submit that a day of reckoning on that assumption is fast approaching. National political candidates who recognize that their fortunes are dependent on capturing the Obama coalition going forward are the most likely to help us avoid the consequences of clinging to those old assumptions for too long. As far as I can see, that field is still open for 2016.

How Obama and technology changed the landscape on campaign finance

Juliet Eilperin - writing in the Washington Post - is right. President Obama has abandoned his previous efforts at campaign finance reform. I'd also suggest that so have most other thinking adults. The reason: the entire edifice of campaign finance is changing as we speak. Previous efforts at reform are quickly becoming obsolete in the new arena being created by the dramatic changes that are the result of 2 things:

1. Obama's two presidential campaigns 
2. Technological innovations

To demonstrate, it might be helpful to remind everyone that there are basically 3 ways that people can donate to federal political campaigns:

1. Individuals can donate up to $2,500 to a candidate 
2. Individuals can donate up to $30,800 to a national party
3. Individuals and corporations can donate an unlimited amount to SuperPACs

President Obama's two presidential campaigns demonstrated that the possibilities in #1 above had been previously untapped when it comes to small individual donors. He outraised both Clinton in the primary and McCain in the general election primarily on the strength of numbers of donors giving small amounts vs a few who were limited to $2,500. By doing so, he revolutionized campaign finance at the presidential level.

Then along camp Citizens United - which allowed #3. Everyone assumed that would change the landscape and give political campaigns back to the fat cats. 

But what we saw in 2012 was that no matter how much money Karl Rove or Sheldon Adelson raised and/or spent, it didn't accomplish much. That's where technology comes it.

What the fat cats have always relied on when it comes to spending their millions of dollars is television advertising. No matter how much money they have - they still only get one vote. Their job is to use their money to influence other people's votes. That has typically been done through advertising - and mostly on TV. 

Trouble is...people don't watch television ads very much anymore. If you're not watching ad-free paid TV, you're streaming or recording minus the ads. And if you can't afford that - there's always channel-surfing or muting during the ads. So they're pretty much a waste of money.

Beyond that - new media has given everyone with a recorder on their cell phone the ability to both produce/distribute ads or record game-changing moments in a political campaign. Just take a minute to think about the one video that had the most impact on the 2012 presidential election...the one where Romney talked about the 47%. How much money did that one require? Zilch - nada.

The other way the Obama campaign changed things is that they effectively used this new media to revolutionize the whole concept of "ground game." But the bottom line was always person-to-person contact via volunteers. Money can't buy that. 

So we're in a period of HUGE upheaval when it comes to how political campaigns are organized and funded. Both the Obama campaigns and technology have upended the old assumptions about big money and what it can/can't buy. Reformers might find that their time is better spent building on these changes rather than legislating the issues of the past. I think that's exactly what President Obama had/has in mind.