I used to think it would be a good thing if we got big money out of politics. I still think that, but now I’m not so sure if small money isn’t even worse.
It’s like pulling weeds. Every week or so I get a breathless text message from my good friends Chuck or Nancy or Hakeem or some other Democratic bigwig letting me know about the latest OUTRAGE! that they’re fighting and how my chipping in just $3 or whatever I can afford right now will make all the difference. They let me know that I can stop these messages by simply texting back “Stop”, which I do instantly. Then a week or so later they come right back and I text back “Stop.” Like pulling weeds. It never ends.
I’m not sure why I’m on their lists. I haven’t given money to a candidate for partisan office in I don’t know when. Probably more than a decade. In fact, I write frequently here that I consider myself a moderate and a “non-partisan Democrat,” which is to say that I vote for Democrats, but I wouldn’t defend one if he did something stupid and I wouldn’t attack a Republican just for being one. I’m even open to voting for a Republican some day, if they would ever again offer up a candidate who wasn’t nuts. But — and I’m just guessing here — Chuck and Nancy and Hakeem don’t read YSDA. Well, I understand. They’re busy people.
In any event, I still get those texts and emails and I sometimes even read them. They’re written by professional fundraisers who intend to stoke anger at the other side. They never, ever say anything positive or, if they do, it’s couched in negativity along the lines of, “Democrats are fighting to restore reproductive rights (fine, that’s positive), but we’re up against anti-choice Republicans who are using deceitful, dirty tricks funded by the KOCH BROTHERS to force women to have children!!”
I assume if I were identified somehow as a Republican I’d be getting equally apocalyptic messages from the other guys.
One advantage of big money in politics is that it tends to be practical, not ideological. Big oil gives money so that they can keep making money from oil. They don’t care about your position on transgender issues or anything else. But the very small number of small donors tend to be true believers, intensely partisan, and obsessed with whatever intensely partisan issue is scaldingly hot at the moment. Combine that with extreme partisan gerrymandering, employed by both parties wherever they can, and you get politicians who need to care only about the most extreme elements in their party.
As a matter of fact, a lot of Republicans are actively attacking corporate interests for being too woke. They don’t care about corporate, fat cat money. They care about the votes and small contributions from deeply conservative individuals who are most effectively motivated by outrage at their enemies. Same goes for the Democrats on the other side of these issues.
The vast majority of us, who are in the middle, can be overlooked because when it comes to the general election we’re expected to hold our noses and vote for one of two choices, neither of which is very close to where we are on the issues. I vote for Democrats because they’re generally somewhat closer to my views while the Trumpy Republican Party has just totally gone off the deep end. But if I had a credible, more centrist alternative to the Democrats, and I could be sure that my vote wasn’t just electing Republicans, I’d be with them in a heartbeat. I am not holding my breath on this.
Center-right columnist Jonah Goldberg, one of my favorites, wrote about this the other day:
A common refrain among my dyspeptic critics is that small donors are enriching democracy by participating. Obviously, this is true for plenty of individual small donors. But it leaves out that, at scale, they cut out the parties and disproportionately reward performative rabble-rousers on the left and right. The most ideologically polarized candidates monetize the most ideologically polarized small donors who in turn reward further polarization. This monetization of fear and outrage is a big business.
Most Americans don’t vote in primaries, religiously watch cable news or make small donations. But the tiny slice of Americans who do all three have captured the primary process, and because most candidates worry more about primary challenges than general election ones, this sliver has outsized influence over politics generally.
Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better myself, so I didn’t try.
And no, I’m not arguing for a return to the smoke-filled room and fat cats picking candidates, but I’m not sure what we have now is any better. In fact, I think it’s probably worse. What I’d like to see is an organized center in American politics, also funded mainly by small donors, that could nominate and support candidates as well as the hard-left and hard-right can.
I dream of the day I get a text from a centrist star along the lines of, “Dave, We’re working on compromise legislation in which we’ll have to give up some stuff to the other guys in order to make significant incremental progress on our main objective. This is okay because when we thoughtfully consider the arguments of the other side we think they make some valid points. So, we’ll trim our proposal in response to their legitimate concerns while keeping our eyes on the prize. Send us some money if you can.”
But a reasonable message like that reads like the parody that it is. One of the fundamental concerns I have about my fellow moderates is that we’re centrists precisely because we’re less subject to — even turned off by — emotionally charged arguments. It might not be possible to put together an effective centrist movement because we’re just not the kind of people who get fired up enough to send money or make cold calls to voters or knock on doors or do any of the stuff that needs to get done in politics. It might be an iron law of politics that moderate views don’t supply the energy that it takes to do the hard work of campaigning.
On this I hope I’m wrong.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Is it a small donor problem or technology? When I was in the Legislature we were forced to attend seminars on social media and particularly Facebook. This was shortly after Obama got elected using social media effectively. Looking back and now knowing how FB operated/operates as a corporation, I would not be surprised if the seminar was paid for through Zuckerberg money. At any rate, the seminar’s entire program (run by millenials) was that there could be nothing but a gold mine of new politics emerging from social media and its direct connection to the wireless smart phone. This is the new norm. Everything from donations to knocking doors. Gone, for most part, are “walk lists” and clipboards. The voter data is loaded onto a phone, not just for candidates but all the direct and indirect surrogates who canvass at election time. with a bit of exaggeration, the social media gurus from 12 or so years ago were entirely wrong about the downsides of FB, twitter and cellphones taking over grassroots campaigning. And all the red flags that those already elected raised were dismissed as “you’re out of touch with the new wave, next generation, blah blah blah”. To me, it is not a small donor problem. This is about our unrelenting faith in the religion of the digital world, full of unrealistic promises and goals, and totally ignoring how these techniques shape the work of candidates, political party, interest group and the paid for internet media biz. Let alone the breakdown of cultural patterns of communication, interpersonal relationships, and meaningful debate over governance, representation, and just being a decent human being.
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