Steve Bainbridge poses that question here. I don’t have time for a detailed response now. I have always been ambivalent about the soft money provisions as a matter of policy—they serve the salutary purpose of breaking the market of the sale of access to elected officials through party intermediaries, but push money to less accountable third party groups. As a matter of constitutional law, I believe that the soft money ban is constitutional, whether it is good policy or not. But McCain-Feingold does other things as well, such as treating those sham issue ads (“Call Rep. Smith and tell her what you think about her plan to gut Medicare”) the same as other ads containing words of express advocacy—meaning that we can have an effective disclosure regime (which we didn’t have pre-McCain-Feingold) as well as limit the extent of corporate and union involvement in the political process.