You should read John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". It makes all my arguments for free political speech for me and in a much more elegant manner. It is self-evide

You should read John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". It makes all my arguments for free political speech for me and in a much more elegant manner. It is self-evident that if you limit the amount of money that people can spend on advertising their political views that niche candidates and less popular ideas will be hurt the most. Unions can compel donations from their millions of members, your Clintons, Obamas, and McCains of the world get the full support and advertising of the major parties. But offbeat candidates will have their speech capped by McCain-Feingold, unless they are personally rich (Ross Perot). We had many outside projects (independent advertisements and the like) that couldn't get cash because so many of us had donated our max amount to the campaign (even though few of us were personally rich). There's something weird about being an American and not being allowed to support a candidate because it is against the law. I would much rather have a rough and tumble, wide-open contest in the finest democratic tradition than Democrats and Republicans writing laws about who is allowed to speak. You seem to want to outlaw outside advertisements because they don't meet your standards for quality. Cool man, cool. I just want you to consider how that position fits within the American liberal tradition. >" If you can't find 1000 people to support you, you shouldn't be in politics. " That sounds like an incumbent protection act to me. We had a few hundred thousand supporters, ended up getting a few million votes! Even found a loophole in McCain-Feingold and set up one venture as a for-profit enterprise (you ever see the "Hillary 2008" t-shirts at airports? Same loophole). We did okay, considering. But man, I just want my freedom back.