Flashing some green

Money makes the world go round, and there are few places that is more true than in Washington. Both parties spent millions and millions of dollars launching ad campaigns to sell their product, politicians owned by the big donors who give them those millions.

Political power derives from the checkbook. Supporters look as much to the warchests of their candidates for reassurance as to their changes as they do to crowds, media coverage and polls. When you’ve got millions in the bank, you are able to dominate the news cycle, flood the airwaves with ads and traverse the nation by jet.

Politicians and the major parties are therefore very sensitive to the needs of their big donors. Congressmen rarely propose legislation that would not be welcomed by their donors, unless it would be overwhelmingly popular among their constituents.

The parties are sensitive to the needs of their donors. There is great interest in making sure the spigot remains open. Every now and then major donors will threaten to defund a party or a candidate if they don’t do this thing or that. That’s what Hillary Clinton’s campaign has turned to as it’s last resort. Once again her donors are threatening to cease giving donations to the Democratic Party.

Though there are some, I’m sure, who get quite nervous when they hear such threats, I’m actually not so sure they’re a bad thing. There is, first of all, the hilarity (pun purely accidental) of a candidate so broke she’s had to loan $11 million of her own money to her campaign threatening to pack up her fund raising machine and go home. In fact, it seems Hillary’s donors have already packed up and gone home, evidenced by rumbles that she may be about to make a third loan to her campaign.

The bigger issue is that it really is time to reexamine how we fund our political party. The Republican Party will continue to pull in big donations from the wealthy. We will continue to see their donors regularly give the maximum allowed to the party and it’s candidates. On the Democratic side we are seeing the emergence of a new model.

Howard Dean really got the internet fund raising machine started. His campaign had the idea of tracking the donations given through their website. They showed their progress towards their goals with a chart shaped like a bat on their website. Combined with sensible populist rhetoric, the campaign touched on a new funding source and millions poured in. Dean eventually lost the election (though he did take Vermont) but he made enough of an impression to get put in charge of the party.

Obama has taken the Dean model to a new level. He has combined his vastly superior speaking skills with the internet machine the Dean discovered and has been raising millions and millions. More importantly though, he is raising that money $50 at a time, from average folks like you and me.

If candidates are most responsive to their funding sources, then perhaps we have a real opportunity to actually change politics in America. If we can buy our candidates ourselves, perhaps we can move beyond the entrenched interests of those who have bought Washington. Politicians need to be responsive to the people and for better or for worse, the best tactic to achieve that result seems to be to buy a candidate.

In the long term, elections need to be publicly financed. That won’t happen until we break away from the grip of the donors who currently own the political parties, and therefore the nation. The best way to get there is to show how well we can fund a candidate without the big donors. Together, we can buy back this nation and take a step towards ending our Impatient Sufferance.