For the love of God, please make it stop!
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been getting an awful lot of emails from various political campaigns and causes that I've supported over the years. After several months of being on the receiving end of numerous high-gear political spamming operations, I'm well past the point of finding it a mere nuisance. It's driving me nuts.
We're five months out from the general election and I'm already heartily sick of the constant, relentless barrage of fundraising emails from candidates and causes that I like, admire, and support. These are the good guys, and I find myself wishing they'd all just go to hell.
But I don't really blame them - at least not entirely. I blame the Supreme Court. More precisely, I blame the conservative majority that gave us the Citizens United decision.
What everybody knows about Citizens United is that it allows unlimited donations to political causes that are technically unaffiliated with particular candidates (wink, wink), thus opening the floodgates for unprecedented amounts of money to flow into the election process. As most of this money flows towards Republicans, Democrats must hustle just to minimize the extent of their enormous fundraising disadvantage.
The whole sorry, tedious, tawdry, phenomenon represents yet another victory for the big money guys - it is another effect of Citizens United, perhaps even more pernicious than the simple GOP vs. Democratic fundraising disparity. Because those without big money backers need to importune their supporters on a constant basis and squeeze them for every available cent, rendering themselves an unbelievable nuisance and disenchanting even their most fervent supporters.
So now it's always a state of emergency and your help is always needed right away. Today! Before midnight tonight! Now! No amount is too small - but no amount is ever enough.
This is screwed up. It's degrading to politicians. It's degrading to their supporters. It's degrading to the country.
And so, yet another unexpected front has opened up in the voter suppression wars. Exhaustion, apathy, disenchantment and disgust with the whole damn process could do as much as, if not more than, voter i.d. laws and misleading robo-calls to depress Democratic turnout on election day.
We need reform. The only way it can happen is if there is so much popular support that politicians who resist reform will suffer at the ballot box. I don't see it happening any time soon, but it's the only way I can imagine reform happening, which is the only way I can imagine reversing our apparently inexorable slouch towards oligarchy, which means that I think the odds are pretty strong in favor of sooner-than-later oligarchy.
And yet I do see one reason for hope: politicians can't enjoy this endless, relentless money raising, can they? It must be almost as exhausting for them as it is undignified. Real campaign finance reform would free politicians of the most onerous daily burden the current system requires them to carry. Surely there must be some way to devise and pitch electoral reform so that politicians themselves would support, and even embrace, it?
We're five months out from the general election and I'm already heartily sick of the constant, relentless barrage of fundraising emails from candidates and causes that I like, admire, and support. These are the good guys, and I find myself wishing they'd all just go to hell.
But I don't really blame them - at least not entirely. I blame the Supreme Court. More precisely, I blame the conservative majority that gave us the Citizens United decision.
What everybody knows about Citizens United is that it allows unlimited donations to political causes that are technically unaffiliated with particular candidates (wink, wink), thus opening the floodgates for unprecedented amounts of money to flow into the election process. As most of this money flows towards Republicans, Democrats must hustle just to minimize the extent of their enormous fundraising disadvantage.
The whole sorry, tedious, tawdry, phenomenon represents yet another victory for the big money guys - it is another effect of Citizens United, perhaps even more pernicious than the simple GOP vs. Democratic fundraising disparity. Because those without big money backers need to importune their supporters on a constant basis and squeeze them for every available cent, rendering themselves an unbelievable nuisance and disenchanting even their most fervent supporters.
So now it's always a state of emergency and your help is always needed right away. Today! Before midnight tonight! Now! No amount is too small - but no amount is ever enough.
This is screwed up. It's degrading to politicians. It's degrading to their supporters. It's degrading to the country.
We need reform. The only way it can happen is if there is so much popular support that politicians who resist reform will suffer at the ballot box. I don't see it happening any time soon, but it's the only way I can imagine reform happening, which is the only way I can imagine reversing our apparently inexorable slouch towards oligarchy, which means that I think the odds are pretty strong in favor of sooner-than-later oligarchy.
And yet I do see one reason for hope: politicians can't enjoy this endless, relentless money raising, can they? It must be almost as exhausting for them as it is undignified. Real campaign finance reform would free politicians of the most onerous daily burden the current system requires them to carry. Surely there must be some way to devise and pitch electoral reform so that politicians themselves would support, and even embrace, it?