The instruments of American politics used to include congealed pizza slices and stale doughnuts — the fare fueling staff and volunteers putting together political fundraising appeals. It was a laborious process, but in words spoken by California’s House Speaker Jess Unruh, money is the mother’s milk of politics.
Technology has transformed all that. Instead of volunteers addressing envelopes, pressing an index finger on a computer screen can send out thousands of appeals for bucks. The process is governed by one iron rule: The more you demand, the more you get.
My email box is driven these days by Donald Trump, for him and against him. Witness this appeal from a leading Democrat: “We will retake our democracy from our new King George,” in the words of an appeal from former U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein Suzi LeVine. Trump counters with a cornucopia of lies and the claim that the Democrats would “destroy America.”
Limits on money date back 120 years to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. The U.S. Supreme Court, in ruling in the 2010 case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, stripped all limitations and restraint for political fundraising. The underlying premise, as Mitt Romney put it speaking at the Iowa State Fair, corporations are people.
With his pungent personality, Trump is such a driving force for both supporters and foes of our POTUS. The result has been billion-dollar expenditures by both sides in 2024 — and nonstop ever since. Elon Musk shelled out $25 million in support of a losing Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate.
Themes of the money wars:
Fear: Rarely does a money appeal bespeak of the bettering of America. Instead, it’s all about tearing town the other guy. Trump is depicted as the rescuer from those (the Democrats) who would “destroy” the Republic. Or the country must be rescued from him.
Greed: Trump is about power, vengeance, and self-enrichment. The bucks from small donors have put TV spots on the air, but also paid the legal bills of our convicted-felon President.
Quality: In the era of Trump, money is becoming the sole criteria for evaluating candidacies. Ideas and intelligence have no place, as is evident with such Trump toadies as Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, and Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama.
Access: Trump keeps company with rich guys, and works (to the extent that he works) to make them richer. Hence, as the wealth gap has grown, and so has the access gap in American politics and government.
Abroad: Dealing with Trump has become the preeminent issue in Canadian politics. It has revived a center-left Liberal Party once headed for a landslide loss. In Mark Carney, the Great White North has picked a Prime Minister who eats Trump for lunch.
We are headed for another billion-dollar-plus campaign cycle this year. Donald Trump has effectively made politics a game for the very rich and disconnected the American.people from their government. In the process, Trump’s government has taken on an aspect of unprecedented cruelty.
This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
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