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Already, results of the first election of the 2016 presidential race are in!
It’s the Money Primary, controlled not by voters, but by superwealthy donors. In this exclusive election, Jeb is way out front of the GOP pack with a record haul of $100 million, while Hillary has bagged $45 million to lead among the Dems. But wait… here come the Koch brothers from out of nowhere, overwhelming all the other campaigns with nearly a billion dollars for their secretive effort to put the presidency under their private control.
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Thanks to the absurd Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court’s corporate minions, running for America’s highest office in our democratic republic has been perverted into the venality of a gold rush. Candidates shamelessly grub for cash in the suites of corporate plutocrats, molding their policy proposals to fit the narrow interests of those moneyed elites.
The donors and political sychophants involved in this obscene corruption of the system are blithefully playing with dynamite. By using money to shove the vast majority of people out of the democratic process, they’re mocking America’s essential egalitarian ideal that we’re all in this together, destroying their own moral legitimacy, and fueling an explosive fury among alienated voters.
In a recent nationwide poll, 84 percent of Americans say that money has too much influence in elections, resulting in policies that favor the donors. The majority also rejects the Supreme Court’s coddling of fat cat donors, with three-fourths of the people wanting limits on how much any donor can give and demanding that “dark money” front groups reveal the sources of their money.
Of course, the aloof political-money class won’t stop their own corruption, but We the People can… and must. To help, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.
“Poll Shows Americans, Favor Overhaul of Campaign Financing,” www.nytimes.com, June 2, 2015.