Dominating the battle space
by Tom Sullivan
Citizens United … yadda, yadda, yadda … we’re a plutocracy.
It seems our plutocrats want to buy America’s elections and, increasingly, we’re willing to let them. Their efforts — like Jeb Bush’s — to dominate the political donations battle space may be succeeding. Analyzing the results of “the most expensive midterm election in history,” costing a whopping $3.77 billion, the Center for Responsive Politics’s Russ Choma finds that fewer donors are choosing to participate. That is, fewer donors are giving more:
Every area of traditional campaign finance saw a decline in the number of donors. Despite the increased cost of this election, the records that a number of races set in terms of overall cost and a huge focus on fundraising, there were just 434,256 identifiable individual donors to candidates in the 2014 election. That’s 107,000 fewer than there were in the 2010 election.
The number of individuals giving money to national party committees also declined — although this was not the first time that happened.
Even when it came to outside spending groups, there were fewer donors. In 2010, there were 57,405 individual donors to outside spending groups (including 527s) who gave a total of $104.6 million, or roughly $1,800 apiece. In 2014, there were 53,725 donors to outside groups, whose average donation was $8,011. That’s an increase in the size of the average donation of almost 445 percent.
Aaron Blake sums up at “The Fix”:
-A nearly 20 percent decline in total donors to candidates in just four years
-A more than 6 percent decline in donors to outside groups, even as these outside groups are multiplying thanks to the court rulings
Perhaps America’s common folk are beginning to cry uncle (Pennybags).
The Koch brothers. Of course, the Koch brothers. But they’re ideologues, zealots, holy warriors armed with golden pens, and not your typical greedheads. There are plenty more of the latter in the Midas cult, drunk on their own wealth and, not content to enjoy it privately or to give it away in service to mankind. They need to dominate the rest of us the way they dominate business rivals. Their watches could buy “a six-pack of Rolexes,” etc.
At what point do plutocrats calculate that they’ve reached a point of diminishing returns in spending money to avoid the costs of maintaining a decent society, and/or to suck dry the national treasury to increase their own? Might they then retire from politics and focus on more traditional, sybaritic pleasures?
Maybe not. Power is quite the aphrodisiac.
If it continues, it is a trend that seems destined to break democracy itself. Well, you break it, you bought it, Pennybags. How much will that cost you?