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DaveT

(687 posts)
Thu Jan 28, 2016, 02:52 PM Jan 2016

Money vs. Money = Money wins

For several decades my personal pet peeve has been the idea of "Campaign Finance Reform."

I have heard from SO many Democrats this basic line, with little variation. "We have to face facts. Until we get Campaign Finance Reform, there's nothing we can do."

I just cringe when I hear it. It puts the cart before the horse. The current system is controlled by the flow of unlimited money. The system will defend itself, and there is no chance that you can pass Campaign Finance Reform unless and until we find a way to elect people without big money.

That is the Bernie Sanders campaign. If people organize, they can beat big money. If people do not organize, big money will continue to set the limits for us all -- and those limits keep moving further to the right with every election cycle.

To argue that you have to have money to win and that it is unicorns and rainbows to think otherwise is to condemn this country to corporate oligarchy forever. Although they slander him regularly by claiming the opposite, Sander is absolutely candid about this. The President is not the agent of change. Votes are what brings change.

This is a truism.

It is a measure of the depravity of our entrenched political experts that they deem the idea that voters rule is radical and dangerous. And every Hillary supporter I have ever encountered believes that they are the ones being "realistic" by dismissing the idea of self government.

It is sad.

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