Coinciding with the paperback release of Plutocrats United, I have written this oped for USA Today. It concludes:
None of these things — Trump courting super PAC donors, Clinton getting paid by the wealthiest companies as a private citizen, or Clinton as secretary of State giving access to big donors to her foundation — amounts to criminal activity or even what we might term corruption. In the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the Court, declared that “ingratiation and access are not corruption.”
But there’s still something wrong with a political system in which access goes to the highest bidder. The Clinton team is quick to argue that there’s no evidence the meetings Clinton gave to big donors led to any official actions. But those donors get more than just a picture with a candidate; they get a chance to make their pitch for the policies they want pursued or blocked, a pitch the rest of us don’t get to make because we don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to contribute to campaigns.
And presidential hopefuls have the least need of any candidates to suck up to rich individual donors, because their campaigns attract so much money from so many different sources.
Consider the race for control of the Senate, where as of last month over $100 million was raised by super PACs and non-disclosing outside groups to try to influence the outcome of these races. Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post reports that $70 million of this money has supported Republicans, with much of the money coming from the Koch Brothers Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Democrats are funneling most of their money through a super PAC allied with retiring Senate Minority LeaderHarry Reid.
The pressure on Senate candidates to court this money distorts not only our elections but our politics. In House races, and in state and local races, the pressure is even more intense.
It is not true that our elections go to the highest bidders. But what is true is that the highest bidders get the ear of those in politics, and the rest of us have to settle for what’s left over after they have made their case. Even this year, when a billionaire is facing off against a multimillionaire.