And I Had High Hopes….

When Barack Obama raised zillions of dollars from millions of small-dollar donors, I was ecstatic. It seemed to me that his success in online fundraising–fulfilling the promise of earlier efforts by Howard Dean and John McCain–would counter the outsized influence of big money donors.

After all, no public official was going to feel indebted to someone who’d sent in $20 dollars-or even $200. Campaigns would be funded by small-dollar gifts sent by regular, mostly non-ideological voters who’d decided they liked Candidate A.

How naive I was….

A guest essay in the New York Times took a look at the current, ugly status of online fundraising. Not that it will come as a shock to anyone who sent $3 or $5 dollars to a candidate only to have their inbox subsequently buried in hysterical, overwrought and frequently inaccurate appeals for money–contributions that would be matched or doubled and would allow Candidate Y to meet the onslaught of scurrilous attacks from Opponent Z.

The overwhelmingly positive narrative about the power of small-dollar online fund-raising began to congeal: Grass-roots fund-raising is pure and good. Big-dollar donations from corporate cronies are suspect. This is what democracy looks like!!!

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. It turns out that Americans don’t just vote for certifiable nutcases and nice but clearly unelectable candidates–they also send them money.

As it turned out, grass-roots fund-raising is also what ending democracy looks like. As with any other mass movement, people-powered campaigns followed the standard Hofferian trajectory: beginning as a cause, turning into a business and becoming a racket. Our online fund-raising system is not only enriching scam artists, clogging our inboxes and inflaming the electorate; it is also empowering our politics’ most nefarious actors.

It is how Donald Trump and his cast of clueless coupsters raised nine figures to “stop the steal” that they had fabricated to try to stay in power. It is one way our most extreme candidates dominate the conversation and gain power in our political system. It has redirected money from politicians who work to find compromises that might just help people, diverting it instead to those who either have no chance to win or, worse yet, can win and want to undermine that work for their own ends. And it’s hard to imagine how we can stop it.

The author pointed to an example “of the hellscape to come.”  Remember when South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during an  address to a joint session of Congress?  After the Democratic-controlled Congress censured him, Mr. Wilson’s campaign team used that incivility to fundraise. The campaign “uploaded fund-raising pleas to YouTube” and bought ad space on The Drudge Report.

In just 12 days he collected more money than he’d spent during his entire previous campaign.

The lesson wasn’t lost on those who raise money for campaigns.They could raise money and gain influence without bothering to build relationships and coalitions in Washington and back home. They could bypass all that by “being jerks on the internet and calling out their voters’ enemy du jour in the most ostentatious manner they could summon.” (Josh Hawley raised $3 million after he was pictured giving a salute to the rioters about to storm the Capitol.)

It’s created a perverse incentive structure, empowering the congressional shock jocks at the expense of actual legislators. Meanwhile, a series of court decisions supercharged political fund-raising generally. The new no-limits era allowed big donors to maximize huge contributions to political committees and blasted billions in dark money through the system, continually raising the stakes of each fund-raising deadline.

The elevation of the small-dollar donor has created other nightmarish unintended consequences, however. Democratic candidates with no hope of winning are raising ungodly sums from online liberals drawn to their flashy videos and clever slams. This is particularly the case when said candidates are running against notably loathed Republicans. In 2020, this meant Jaime Harrison, the current Democratic National Committee chairman, raised a record-breaking $131 million in his campaign against Senator Lindsey Graham, despite the fact that Mr. Harrison lost by double digits and never really had a prayer….hundreds of millions of dollars are being pumped into hopeless hype candidates.

As the essay notes, it has become a race to the bottom, inflaming a party’s base voters.

Can we ever know the full effect that years of emails, texts, Facebook ads and viral Twitter ads with doom-driven fund-raising appeals have had on the average voter’s conception of the country and politics? How those stimuli may have contributed to the radicalization of their recipients, especially those who aren’t in on the joke (a nihilistic campaign politics trope in which the strategists make arguments they know are phony)?

So much for my early optimism….

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True Colors

Can you stand one more post about Mike Pence?

Yesterday, a friend shared an email she received from our former Indiana Governor and current Trump toady/VP candidate.

The fundraising plea came as Pence spoke to ALEC, telling the corporate interest group that “I was for ALEC before it was cool!” (Ahem–breaking news, Mike: it still isn’t cool.) ALEC has been behind state-level voter ID measures, draconian immigration-enforcement laws and “Stand Your Ground” legislation–not to mention an anti-environmental agenda centered upon denial of climate change and support of fossil fuels. Those positions have prompted a number of  companies–including Google, AOL, Yahoo, Yelp, eBay, BP and Facebook–to leave the organization.

Pence has always had close ties to ALEC and the Koch Brothers. Other positions he has taken since joining the Trump ticket, however, represent a dramatic change from previous postures. For example, Mr. Conspicuous Piety seems positively eager to support a twice-divorced, foul-mouthed, belligerent buffoon who models behaviors inconsistent with both the culture-war positions for which the Governor was previously known and the civility he actually practiced.

(Speaking of civility: For sheer chutzpah, its hard to top Pence’s recent criticism of Democrats for “name calling.” Psychiatrists have a word for that: projection.)

What really sent me over the edge, however, was the text of the fundraising email shared by my friend.

Friend,

I can’t wait until we have an America we can both be proud of again.

When we have a President who looks out for Americans first.

A President who rips up trade deals that kill American jobs. A President that builds a wall and places our National Security first. A President who will Make America Great Again!

I can’t wait until we have a leader like Donald Trump as our next President.

If you can’t wait either, then I need you to donate today so we can make that happen.

In fact, Donald Trump told me that up until Sunday, he is going to personally match your donation dollar-for-dollar, up to $1 million.

So friend, if you are like me and you can’t wait until we have a President who puts America first, then let’s work together to take our country back today.

Since this plea was written in a foreign language–Lapdog–I hope you’ll permit me to translate.

Friend,

I know I used to be a proponent of free trade, but I’m carrying water for Donald Trump these days, so now I’m all for ripping up trade deals. I’m flexible.

I know I’ve spent years  preaching American exceptionalism, but Donald says America is weak and in terrible shape, so I am obediently parroting that line, too.

On the important issues, after all, Donald and I have long agreed.

Donald and I agree that we need to Make America Great Again because a President who is African-American could not possibly put America first. We need a President more like Putin. Strong.

Donald and I also totally agree that we need to take the country back from the minorities and immigrants and uppity women who are ruining it. We need to return to the good old days, when just being a straight white guy entitled you to run things, and those “others” knew their place.

And I hope you noticed my reference to Donald’s money. That’s the proof that he is qualified to be President. (And don’t go drawing negative conclusions from his refusal to make his tax returns public. If he says you don’t need to see those returns, then you don’t need to see them.) Being a rich white guy is how he knows he’s superior to everyone else, and entitled to be President, even though he is admittedly a monumental, delusional ignoramus.

One thing Hoosiers have learned since Donald Trump swooped in and saved Mike Pence from looming electoral defeat: these two truly deserve each other.

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