4 ms·

Currently ~6 people have a shot of becoming the president, 4 of them are supported by super-pacs. Money does not care if the president is dem or rep they only w

by spdy 11y ago

Currently ~6 people have a shot of becoming the president, 4 of them are supported by super-pacs. Money does not care if the president is dem or rep they only want them to execute on their agenda. The odds are stacked against the majority of the population. And if you go one level below the presidential race you can easily buy seats in the house / senate with huge contributions because people do not care that much as they do now. Overall this is not a problem in the USA alone if you have the media/papers on your side, who are usually owned by a small amount of people/families, the chance of winning an elections grows exponential. Hopefully we see a change with this election as people realize they are getting gamed and start to research online. That`s one of the reasons Sanders will have a very good chance of winning because you can lookup 20+ year old videos and he is consistent.

roguecoder 11y ago
All six candidates are supported by super PACs; not all are supported by PACs. Super PACs don't coordinate with candidates and can't donate to campaigns but do spend money to influence elections, whereas PACs collect money for candidates or political campaigns.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > All six candidates are supported by super PACs; not all are supported by PACs. I think you have that backwards; in any case, as you have phrased this it is impossible, as Super PACs are a subset of PACs, so every candidate supported by a SuperPAC is also supported by a PAC.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> And if you go one level below the presidential race you can easily buy seats in the house / senate with huge contributions because people do not care that much as they do now. A number of people who have put their money where your mouth is on that claim have lost quite a lot of money without ending up with the house / senate seat that is supposedly easy to buy.
- chiaro 11y ago
  Necessary vs sufficient conditions. Ideally, it wouldn't be either.
sprakshu 11y ago
I agree with what you're saying but think you haven't considered the correct counterfactual. Right now we live in a world where candidates raise oodles of cash. Why? Mostly to pay for marketing and media pushes. Money gets you TV ads, radio spots, etc. Let's say we wave our magic Citizens United wand and heavily restrict campaign financing in some way. Restrict how much they can raise. Restrict how much they can spend. Restrict where they can get money. Doesn't matter, just imagine that the end result is that candidates raise a few million instead of a few billion. What happens now? You hit the nail ont he head right there > Overall this is not a problem in the USA alone if you have the media/papers on your side the chance of winning an elections grows exponential. The media is biased. It's biased because it's ultimately run by humans and humans aren't robots. Media owners have politicians they favour. Media employees have political leanings. Right now, in a world with essentially unlimited campaign spending, this media bias largely doesn't matter, because they are more than happy to take any politician's money in exchange for ad space This changes in a world where politicians can't spend enough money to buy ad space. In this world, who gets the TV spots? The people with connections. The candidates leverage personal friendships and ideological biases to get "heavily discounted" airtime while the less well connected, or less institutionally popular candidates get nothing. We all look at campaign financing and see the bad parts, but consider the alternative. In this world, Sanders can still run TV spots because he can crowdsource money from grassroots sources and pay what ads cost. In a world with that door closed to him, all he can do is fall back on connections and hope for the best. And for someone for whom being an outsider is so core to his branding, I wouldn't count on those connections to amount to much
- spdy 11y ago
  Take a look at Germany for example every TV stations has to give an even amount of air time to every party running in an election. You cant kill the bias but its possible to make it fairer on this side.
  - mc32 11y ago
    But how do you do that where parties don't get to choose/appoint a candidate? Give equal access to candidates themselves? What's the cutoff? Signatures? Who pays for the canvassing to get signatures? Polling? Who pays for the robocalls and advertising? So this works better during a general election rather than in primaries. I mean would we give all original 12 Republican candidates the same time allotment as the three Dem candidates, what if an IND had only one candidate?

by spdy 11y ago

roguecoder 11y ago

All six candidates are supported by super PACs; not all are supported by PACs. Super PACs don't coordinate with candidates and can't donate to campaigns but do spend money to influence elections, whereas PACs collect money for candidates or political campaigns.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> All six candidates are supported by super PACs; not all are supported by PACs. I think you have that backwards; in any case, as you have phrased this it is impossible, as Super PACs are a subset of PACs, so every candidate supported by a SuperPAC is also supported by a PAC.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> And if you go one level below the presidential race you can easily buy seats in the house / senate with huge contributions because people do not care that much as they do now. A number of people who have put their money where your mouth is on that claim have lost quite a lot of money without ending up with the house / senate seat that is supposedly easy to buy.

chiaro 11y ago
Necessary vs sufficient conditions. Ideally, it wouldn't be either.

sprakshu 11y ago

I agree with what you're saying but think you haven't considered the correct counterfactual. Right now we live in a world where candidates raise oodles of cash. Why? Mostly to pay for marketing and media pushes. Money gets you TV ads, radio spots, etc. Let's say we wave our magic Citizens United wand and heavily restrict campaign financing in some way. Restrict how much they can raise. Restrict how much they can spend. Restrict where they can get money. Doesn't matter, just imagine that the end result is that candidates raise a few million instead of a few billion. What happens now? You hit the nail ont he head right there > Overall this is not a problem in the USA alone if you have the media/papers on your side the chance of winning an elections grows exponential. The media is biased. It's biased because it's ultimately run by humans and humans aren't robots. Media owners have politicians they favour. Media employees have political leanings. Right now, in a world with essentially unlimited campaign spending, this media bias largely doesn't matter, because they are more than happy to take any politician's money in exchange for ad space This changes in a world where politicians can't spend enough money to buy ad space. In this world, who gets the TV spots? The people with connections. The candidates leverage personal friendships and ideological biases to get "heavily discounted" airtime while the less well connected, or less institutionally popular candidates get nothing. We all look at campaign financing and see the bad parts, but consider the alternative. In this world, Sanders can still run TV spots because he can crowdsource money from grassroots sources and pay what ads cost. In a world with that door closed to him, all he can do is fall back on connections and hope for the best. And for someone for whom being an outsider is so core to his branding, I wouldn't count on those connections to amount to much

spdy 11y ago
Take a look at Germany for example every TV stations has to give an even amount of air time to every party running in an election. You cant kill the bias but its possible to make it fairer on this side.
- mc32 11y ago
  But how do you do that where parties don't get to choose/appoint a candidate? Give equal access to candidates themselves? What's the cutoff? Signatures? Who pays for the canvassing to get signatures? Polling? Who pays for the robocalls and advertising? So this works better during a general election rather than in primaries. I mean would we give all original 12 Republican candidates the same time allotment as the three Dem candidates, what if an IND had only one candidate?