For example, here is a June 2014 article entitled 'Crony capitalists rule, and Cantor’s defeat won’t change that', that goes into detail about ad campaigns and large political contributions — though it is obviously biased, in that it emphasizes Republican donors, while ignoring Democratic donors — but the author fails to acknowledge the obvious point that it is the public that must be bought, since a candidate cannot win an election without popular support —
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/crony-capitalists-rule--and-cantor-s-defeat-won-t-change-that.html
http://archive.is/bjxep
So how does buying an election work? The author of the article above states that it can be hard to even find out who the incumbent challengers are in an election —
...But the implication of that statement — that candidates with the most funding somehow make it hard for voters to find out who else is running in an election — is obviously absurd. This often heard complaint that the best-funded candidates cannot be defeated, depends on the unstated condition that voters make little effort to find out what is going on, and rely primarily on political commercials they see during their favorite television shows — but that does not mean it is hard to find out who is running in an election. And notice that limiting the campaign spending of well funded candidates does nothing to address the author's criticism, even if it is true, since it will not somehow make it easier to find out about candidates with less funding.
What that money buys is saturation media presence for the best-funded candidates, and sophisticated campaign ads that subtly smear underfunded challengers. In some races, it's hard for voters to even learn the names of challengers.
...
And limiting campaign spending will certainly have no effect on preventing poor choices by voters, since if voters are only even aware of candidates or election issues for which they have been bombarded with advertisements, it will be impossible for voters to make informed choices, even if similar ad campaigns are run for every issue and candidate — unless one wishes to argue that ads are educational and provide voters with critical information. Which is not a claim that any reasonable person would make, and it certainly is not one the author of the article quoted above was making.
In short, unless voters at least take the act of voting seriously enough to do the necessary homework, the election process will never produce anything but varying degrees of failure, and limiting the ability of certain candidates to run campaign ads will not change that. Implying that a well funded candidate can somehow prevent voters from educating themselves about an election, or stating that voters are easily manipulated by sophisticated ad campaigns, is attacking the integrity and intelligence of voters, and not the election process and campaign finance. If the author's main point is true — that 'crony capitalists rule' as a result of political contributions, and will continue to do so — it means that voters do not take the act of voting seriously, and will never do the necessary homework. In that case, only the voters are to blame, and we need to stop wasting time complaining about campaign finance.
Voters still control who wins elections, and so who takes office, and if they will not take the choice seriously and educate themselves, the process will continue to produce a garbage output. The expression that arose years ago for information processing with computers also applies here — GIGO — 'garbage in, garbage out'.
Here is Milton Friedman explaining this beautifully, in his response to a questioner who raised the issue of bringing change to the U.S. Congress 'to get off the treadmill' —
Friedman points out that all politicians are engaged in the business of vote buying — but what is vote buying? It is promising the voting public something to get their vote. Politicians have to pander to the public to gain and keep their office. Here is the transcript of Friedman's response —
"No, we don't need to change Congress. Excuse me. You know, people have a great misunderstanding about this. People in Congress are in a business — they're trying to buy votes — they're in the business of competing with one another to get elected. The same Congressman will vote for a different thing, if he thinks that's politically profitable. You don't have to change Congress. People have a great misconception in this way — they think the way you solve things is by electing the right people. It's nice to elect the right people, but that isn't the way you solve things. The way you solve things, is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things."Friedman's summary for solving problems in government deserves repeating —
"The way you solve things, is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things."Of course, it is the voting public that determines what is politically profitable, so until the public makes it politically profitable for politicians to do the right things, it makes no difference how much money is or isn't spent on political contributions. Politicians do the wrong things, because the public keeps them in office for doing the wrong things.
Here is another June 2014 article, entitled 'Addicted to Koch? New documentary traces influence of Koch brothers' money in GOP', which gives an absurdly biased take on spending in politics, in that it fails to acknowledge that the all time top political contributors are Democratic, and that the contributions of the Koch brothers have been trivial by comparison —
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/addicted-to-koch-new-documentary-traces-influence-...html
https://archive.is/zgY1g
The 'Center for Responsive Politics' shows the top political contributions by organization at the links below, including all contributions made since 1989. Note that since that time, the 'Service Employees International Union' has contributed almost 8 times as much to Democrats, as 'Koch Industries' has contributed to Republicans. So why haven't the subjects of the article at the link above made a documentary entitled 'Addicted to Service Employees International Union?', given that they are so concerned about money in politics?
And notice that this list of top all-time donors is dominated by Democratic contributors — mainly unions. This is 'Director's Law' at work again —
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/index.php
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?cycle=ALL
(Service Employees International Union #1, Koch Industries #50, as of 2/2015)
It is comical that the Koch brothers are singled out so often in this regard, given how small their contributions have been when compared with the top Democratic contributors. In that vein, consider this quote from the article, that makes it sound like Democrats are just trying to keep up by 'falling in line with Republicans', when the opposite characterization is actually more accurate —
“The Democrats are certainly opening the floodgates with their money,” Lessin said. “They're falling in line with the Republicans and it's a trans-partisan issue. The problem is who loses when all this money gets pumped into the political process. I think we do.”
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?cycle=ALL
And here is Ben Cohen's website (from Ben & Jerry's ice cream) to start a movement to get money out of politics —
http://www.stampstampede.org/
http://archive.is/4PJlW
Here is a quote from the website —
The influence of money in politics is one of the biggest problems of our time because it impacts every issue and diminishes everyone’s voice. When politicians focus more on fundraising than legislating, the elite who can afford a lobbyist or cut big campaign checks gain access and influence while ‘we the people’ get left behind. That’s not right, and people everywhere are stepping up to do something about it.Notice it is the same fallacy being repeated again, in that the implication is that voters are hapless pawns in a process for which they are responsible. Politicians raise money to reach voters, since they must get a majority of the popular vote to get elected — that is, to repeat what Milton Friedman stated in the video above, politicians are responding to the incentives created by voters.
And what is even more fascinating about this obsession with money in politics, is that there are numerous examples to demonstrate that unpopular candidates cannot buy an election, regardless of how much they spend.
Consider the 2010 election in California, where Meg Whitman lost to Jerry Brown in their race for governor. Whitman spent almost 5 times as much as Brown on the election ($177M vs. Brown's $36M), and Brown still won easily, receiving a million more votes than Whitman (close to 54% of the vote, to Whitman's 41%) —
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24609709.html
http://archive.is/pliqD
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/02/meg-whitman-spending-wher_n_777644.html
http://archive.is/iZQe3
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/01/local/la-me-governor-money-20110201
http://archive.is/UZoLZ
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jerry+brown+meg+whitman+campaign+spending
I once gave the Brown/Whitman example to someone who is upset about campaign finance (especially the Supreme Court decision, Citizens United), and they dismissed it by saying, 'Oh, that's an anomaly' (of course, they could not give an example where an unpopular candidate was able to win an election by outspending their opponent). But even if you agree that the Brown/Whitman race is an anomaly, it still devastates the argument that campaign finance is a problem, since it proves that voters will not simply elect someone because they dramatically outspend their opponent.
Of course, there are other examples that undercut the idea that the best-funded candidate can 'buy' an election. Here is just one more — Steve Forbes. Forbes is reported to have spent $69 million on his two runs for the White House in 1996 and 2000, and he never came close to even receiving the Republican nomination, let alone winning a presidential election —
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=steve+forbes+presidential+campaign
Here is an interesting Freakonomics podcast on money and elections. In the podcast, Stephen Dubner, the co-author of 'Freakonomics', points out that there is a correlation between money and success in politics, but not a causal relationship. That is, the most successful candidates (those that can actually win elections) tend to draw the largest contributions, because the qualities that make them able to win are the same qualities that make them attractive to both contributors and voters. Successful politicians are able to raise large amounts of money because they are popular — they do not become popular because they raised large amounts of money. People like Meg Whitman and Steve Forbes (among others) clearly demonstrate that point.
Here is a quote from Steve Levitt, the other co-author of 'Freakonomics', who did a study in an attempt to measure the actual effect of differences in campaign spending (the quote is from the podcast, and the PDF shows the full study) —
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUsingRepeatChallengers1994.pdf
http://archive.is/WZeFX
http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/does-money-really-buy-elections-a-new-marketplace-podcast-full-transcript/
http://archive.is/3kmO9
Steve LEVITT: When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really, really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.
The obsession with money in politics that is expressed by many Americans, amounts to little more than a comfortable avoidance of the responsibility of voters to inform themselves about all the choices available in a particular election. The belief that money, by necessity, corrupts the election process, requires the precondition that voters are incapable of making rational, informed choices when they have seen a large number of ads — that is, it requires the precondition that voters have no control over how they respond to an ad campaign. If this is true, even completely eliminating money from politics by publicly funding elections will accomplish nothing, since it will not magically endow voters with the mental capacity and motivation to make informed choices. It is a complete non sequitur to argue that eliminating money from politics will cause voters to make more informed choices.
In essence, many people are really arguing that voters are so fundamentally incapable of making a reasonable choice, that if those voters see too much of one candidate's advertising campaign, they will inevitably vote for that candidate. So to those who oppose money in politics, the solution is obvious — do not let voters get too much exposure to any one candidate in the media. But there is no reasonable way to argue that this will engender better choices from voters — if voters take the choice seriously, a candidate's campaign will be among the least important inputs in making their selection, since what the candidate has actually done is more important. Of course, this is the diplomatic description — many people use the issue of money in politics as a cover to justify silencing others in a politically correct way (they can pretend it is somehow good for democracy).
Members of the main stream press, along with the voting public, refuse to acknowledge that the public at large must be grossly irresponsible for well funded campaigns to dominate elections. This can only be true if the electorate is cavalier and lazy when they vote.
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