Whatever voters’ disappointment with the fractious and bitter election campaign, the moneyed forces underpinning the candidates are quietly doing very well. It’s estimated that the $6.3 billion record set for election spending by presidential and congressional candidates in 2012 will be surpassed by at least a billion dollars this year, driven by affluent mega-donors whose insider heft with politicians grows with each seven-figure check they write.
For all the discord of the campaign, there is overwhelming agreement by the public — 78 percent, according to a Bloomberg Politics national poll last year — that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision should be overturned, as it is a main cause of wealthy Americans’ rising power to buy political clout.
Unfortunately, the public’s concern has stirred virtually nothing in the way of a straight-talk debate between the two presidential candidates about how they would rein in the abuses of big money. This is a grave omission. The lure of outsized donations is corrupting the political process.