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2016 Election Cycle Led By Billionaire Donors
Nicola Hahn writes: The pluralist stance of American politics contends that true power in the United States has been constitutionally vested in "the people" through mechanisms like the electoral process, freedom of speech, and the ability to establish political parties. The traditional view is that these aspects of our political system result in a broad distribution of power that prevents any one faction from gaining an inordinate amount of influence. And today the New York Times has revealed the shortcomings of this narrative by publishing the names of the 158 wealthy families that have donated almost half of the money spent towards the 2016 presidential race. This group of donors is primarily Republican and is dominated by interests in the banking industry. These facts lend credence to the idea that national policy making is influenced heavily by a relatively small group of people. That the American body politic is largely controlled by a deep state.
Apparently that's the exception to the rule, because...
In 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races that had been decided by mid-day Nov. 5, the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning
And that was in 2008. It's only gotten worse since Citizens United (2010). If you think our governance is not hopelessly corrupted by money in politics, then I've got a bridge you might be interested in.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Except that, cases like Citizens United relied on the idea that donation is like speech. It's one thing to have a general feeling that American Politicians are corrupt. It's another, completely, to have hard evidence about specific numbers of families. Lots of the scientific process is about questioning basic assumptions and when they turn out to be true, that's science too. In this particular case, last time we had a debate about the USA becoming an oligarchy there were comments warning people that they would lose power by opposing it and other ones claiming that this is about the US system working as intended and blocking change.
In reality the fact that a supposedly "liberal" president is passing (effectively) laws like the TPP which are specifically designed to introduce new protections for corporate interests over the interests of the people who voted for him and the fact that this was started by a supposedly "conservative" president, whilst being specifically designed to increase the power of the government to push corporate interests over the interests of the people who voted for him shows that the US constitution, with it's wonderful idea of separation of powers, has well and truly bypassed by people rich enough to control both major political parties, the courts and the president simultaneously.
Don't normally post on politics, but have disagree on this one. Money has alway an important played a role, but so did political parties, pecking orders, etc. Nowadays, it's all about the money, and a single well-heeled benefactor can keep an otherwise unviable candidate in the running. Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.