In the post-Citizens United world, Republicans and their corporate backers appear able to spend unlimited amounts of money to give their side a major advantage in just about any race they choose to contest—last night's recall election in Wisconsin being the latest case in point. So what's the Democratic strategy to deal with that?
Rachel Maddow asked that question of Nancy Pelosi at a Washington event today. Here's how the Democratic House leader responded:
We have to disclose, win, reform, and then amend the Constitution to overturn the Citizens United decision.
What does that mean?
First, Democrats need to pass laws that at least require political contributions to be publicly disclosed, so that, unlike now, voters know who's behind the barrage of attack ads they're seeing on TV. Even some Republicans have said in the past they're open to beefing up disclosure laws, though lately the GOP seems to have soured on the idea.
Then, Pelosi says, Democrats need to gain control of the House and Senate, and keep control of the White House. That would let them pass far-reaching campaign finance reform, to limit the influence of money in politics.
But of course, that might well be struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. That's why, Pelosi says, the ultimate goal is a constitutional amendment clearly protecting efforts to clean up the system.
That's not going to happen tomorrow, needless to say. Or for a whole lot of tomorrows. But it's revealing that Democrats are now so resigned to being consistently on the short end of the money competition that they're starting to talk about a long-term, step-by-step plan to change the dynamic.
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Pelosi response to this question tells all of us that the Democratic Party has been doing nothing to stop this terrible surge of suppression that has now become a real deep rooted threat to our Constitution and government political system. All these months they have rung their hands and hoped for the best.
I have been wondering for a long time why you never heard from the Democratic officials in Washington DC..They have kept quiet about many of the back room deals and about the out right lies that the GOP have been spreading to divide our country.
Conquer and Divide...
Pelosi Kicked the can of huge problems facing our nation down the road so far that she will never live long enough to see the horrible results of her inaction.
In many ways the Democrats have had their hands ties since 2010, but not before 2012. The Democrats played their social games and personally profited from their insider information that came directly from Wall Street....
The Democratic Party has already sold their souls to the top 1% and big money corporations that have an invested interest in our country's economy. The World Trade Organization have members from all over the World...This is where Wall Street and Big Banks sold their huge bundles of loans made by FHA and Fannie Mae countries like Iran now own parts of the American Economy..
The RNC needed the ignorant uneducated electorial voters that put Walker into the Winners Circle in WI...Our education system has been gutted by the Republican party for the last 40 years...This game plan has been in the planning and stratagy stages for a 1 party government since Reagan..."Trickle Down Ecomomy." That was the stupidest most harmful thing to our country any President ever signed into law.
My Mother was in her 80's when Reagan signed this into law. She said."How stupid all they have to do is keep getting a bigger cup and invest their big profit money into other countries where they will just make more profit."
Pelosi, you and the Democratic Party are not innocent in what is happening to our country..You sold us to the highest bidder by keeping your mouth shut and kicking it down the road for someone else to deal with later. Later has arrived.
This is why we DESPERATELY needed Buddy Roemer in the race, but unfortuntely the partisans are too blind to see that both parties are in collusion on this. "Disclose, Win, Reform, Amend" Sorry, Nancy has it backwards. REFORM must come first. There is always another election to be won, another election that they need the big donors to finance. The end always seems to justify the means.
"If I'm the plan, that's a bad plan." Rachel Maddow quipped. There is only one plan, that is that the electorate will wise up to the big money men trying to buy off America. In other words, there isn't any plan. The Roberts court is corrupt. The American electorate is also horrendously stupid. White men are perfectly capable of jumping off a cliff at any time, en masse. There is no cure for "Citizens United" except perhaps if the corporate media begins again to inform America, which isn't going to happen. Corporate media is corrupt. Corporate media are corporate puppets. They are bought and paid for by the same folks who pay off the politicians. Counting on the corporate media is indeed, "a bad plan."
While Buddy Roemer isn't a candidate anymore, We, his supporters are mobilizing to help him in his campaign to fight the corruption of our govenment. If you want to join that fight, join our group, Americans United With Buddy Roemer
#!/groups/CitizensUnitedForBuddyRoemerForPresident/
it's going to take American media to renew it's sacred trust to America to turn the tide of corporate corruption in the United States. Wall Street and the big corporate boys know the wheels of justice are slowly turning and that Wall Street is due a reckoning, so Wall Street is going to do every underhanded thing imaginable to avoid the consequences of their nefarious actions. We know this and we also know that the media is absolutely subservient to their corporate sponsors, so they will continue to whimper their way through the days and nights of injustice in our country. American media is drugged on money and priviledge and do not want to upset their corporate apple cart....
It is our contention at Renew Democracy, an advocacy group for
a constitutional amendment for campaign finance reform, that the constitutional
basis currently for any restrictions to any type of political or campaign
spending by any entity group or individual is tenuous at best. The First
Amendment is plain. This places our political system in crisis as there is no
constitutional basis for regulating what the vast majority of Americans
realizes needs to be regulated.
We feel that just as many of the constitutional restrictions on social behavior
ensure the primacy of individual rights to protect from the tyranny of the
majority by making the rights of the group subservient to the rights of the
individual, it is crucial to ensure the rights of the individual voter have
primacy in the political process. For this reason we advocate for a
constitutional amendment.
The outline of the proposal of the Renew Democracy amendment goes far beyond
the bumper sticker solutions of "corporations are not people" and
"money is not speech" that many advocacy groups have latched onto as
easy fundraisers. Our proposal would be a significant restructuring of the
current motivation that present campaign "pay for play" creates in
our representatives. We feel that unless our representatives are motivated to
represent only the voters, our current broken system cannot be transformed.
A constitutional amendment is indeed a tall order and that is why it is crucial
for its advocates to gain a full understanding of the underlying issues and
advocate for an amendment that is both powerful and can be widely acceptable to
the vast majority of Americans of all political persuasions. Sen. McGovern and
others advocacy of this issue is highly laudable however the issues of
corporate personage and money equaling speech are in many ways red herrings and
distract us from solving the seminal issues at hand. As far as corporate
personage is concerned, determining the legal status and nomenclature utilized
is not the seminal issue. What is seminal is what corporations, unions and
other organizations and groups can do to distort democracy through the power
they gain by aggregation both economically and politically.
That is why the Renew Democracy Amendment proposes in part that:
"The right to contribute to political campaigns and political parties is
held solely by individual citizens."
This strong statement diffuses concern about the status of any organization as
it would no longer be able to contribute. For the understandable concern that
the public has with regards to the issue of whether money equals speech to facts
must be recognized. The first is that any donation to campaigns and candidates
is political speech so at its very essence any donation has the form of money
equaling speech. . That is why the Renew Democracy Amendment proposes,
"Political campaign and political party contributions shall not exceed an
amount reasonably affordable by the average American."
This allows for small-scale contributions that cannot by themselves influence
legislators to act contrary to the will of the majority of their constituents.