Election Integrity: Getting Money Out of Politics.

This one is the “Hail Mary.”

The movement to get money out of politics will take a very long time. I know people don’t want to hear that. My guess is, in the best case scenario, we’re looking at 20 years. Best case. If it makes you feel any better, the movement to get money into politics took 181 years, so by that measure, two decades to unravel what took 181 to build isn’t all that bad. Either we’re committed to playing the long game or not. The assholes that got us here were.

Chapter One: Non-Negotiable #4

Let’s review where we are with our five “Non-Negotiables of the Left” to put this fourth entry into proper context. The first three are foundational principles that can be enacted into policy through legislation. Ending homelessness, guaranteeing meaningful work and providing free unfettered access to healthcare are policy initiatives; determinations that we as a majority body can make of those who represent us. Nothing fundamentally has to change in the procedural aspects of our democracy, but by no stretch of the imagination are they easy to pull off.

These three demands are meant for placards at rallies. They are easy to understand. Easy to promote. Massive in their implications.

Right now there are protests and rallies being planned around the country. They are sporadic and reactionary. Expressions of disgust with vague intent like, “we are not a monarchy,” and “no one elected Elon.” The right is loving every one of them because they’re as amorphous as they are ineffective. They can simply agree and move on with their agenda. By the way, the Democrats are loving this as well because they too can nod in agreement because they’re not being held to account in any tangible way.

In contrast with such vague expressions of discontent, the first three Non-Negotiables are tangible table stakes and within the grasp and ability of the Democratic Party. We know how to build structures to house people and provide wraparound services of care that help get them back on their feet. It’s hard, but we know how to do it. We’ve developed civilian labor corps in the past in regional pockets such as the Tennessee Valley Authority. We even developed a civilian-military corps partnership during World War II to provide full employment. This might be an unsavory parallel but it’s true.

And Medicare already exists. Building upon the existing infrastructure to provide healthcare coverage to all would be even easier than the first two; the hardest part about it is providing an offramp for those who are employed in the private insurance and administrative sector. Hence, non-negotiable two.

The most far-fetched part of the first three Non-Negotiables is the idea that the current Democratic Party is capable of delivering them. This is the biggest leap of faith required to pursue this kind of movement.

The Money Issue

Many on the Left have abandoned the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party abandoned them. And we’re living in this new reality. This leads many to believe that both major parties are so wholly corrupt that only a third party can restore true liberalism in our system. But as we’ve demonstrated, this too is magical thinking.

The supposition is correct—both parties have been corrupted by big money donors, our subject today. But the conclusion they’ve drawn is incorrect for the same reason. The major parties have handed the keys to the donor class and together they have erected barriers to entry for any third party. That’s why, as we pointed out in our prior episode, the Libertarian Party—which has been around for more than 50 years—and the Green Party—itself now 41 years old—have exactly zero representation in Congress. 90+ years collectively and nothing to show for it. Why? Because it costs too much money to build the kind of infrastructure the major parties have achieved.

Not to mention, from a historical perspective, we’ve had a two-party system since the earliest days of our founding when we were divided into federalists and anti-federalists. The two sides formalized their opposition to one another in the form of parties—the Democrats and the Whigs (who eventually became Republicans). So this is how it has always been. And yet, major reforms and strides were made under these systems. Granted some took hundreds of years, but others took far less. The point is it’s possible to create meaningful reform under a two-party system. The problem today isn’t that we have only two parties, it’s where their bread is buttered and who’s doing the buttering.

Get money out of politics and you can change the entire apparatus. Don’t, and we will ride this thing to its inevitable conclusion: oligarchy.

Tethering ourselves to five Non-Negotiables doesn’t mean these are the ends. On the contrary, they’re the means. A population that doesn’t live in economic precarity makes better decisions. Fascism rises in uncertainty and preys on fear. Eliminate these fears and fascism lies dormant and undisturbed until the whole cycle continues again.

Chapter Two: The Long and Winding Road to Citizens United

Our system was designed to be slow moving and deliberate. The Senate was created as a cooling mechanism to prevent the House from giving into populism. Together they exist to check the power of the executive. And keeping an eye on all of them is the judicial system. As of this moment, they’re all in the hands of a single party that serves at the pleasure of the wealthy donors who crafted this reality over a 70 year period. Money in politics is an entirely modern construct and one that our system is unprepared to manage.

When the nation was formed there were three existential threats that ultimately guided the framers in all things: monarchy, slavery and war. So many of the legislative and judicial battles in our brief history were centered around these threats. The only war that threatened to end this experiment was a civil war and it was fought over slavery. But we grew into the strongest and most feared nation on the planet, so no one has dared overthrow us for a very long time. And so far we’ve avoided a monarchy, but it’s 2025 and that script is being rewritten so stay tuned.

The one threat not contemplated by the framers was money. It was assumed we would be represented by landed gentry from the outset so it makes sense. George Washington and his contemporaries would have found modern campaign practices not just foreign but antithetical to their conception of public service. The very idea of soliciting contributions was considered unseemly, as wealthy candidates were expected to self-finance their campaigns, often offering constituents gifts (including free whiskey) to encourage votes—ironically the only practice that would be illegal today but one that would certainly work on me.

This paradigm shifted dramatically with Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign, which marked the first organized campaign effort in American history.

Jackson, lacking the prestigious family background and personal wealth of his predecessors, pioneered what would become modern campaign practices, including media engagement and grassroots organizing. While Jackson himself didn’t directly solicit financial support, his campaign established the precedent for rewarding political loyalists with federal positions, laying the groundwork for the patronage system that would dominate 19th Century politics.

The first significant federal campaign finance law emerged in 1867 with the Naval Appropriations Bill, which prohibited federal employees from soliciting campaign contributions from naval yard workers. This was followed by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which attempted to curtail the political patronage system that had taken root during Jackson’s era. However, these early reforms proved insufficient to address the growing influence of money in politics.

The turn of the 20th Century saw increased public awareness and concern about campaign finance, particularly after William McKinley’s 1896 campaign received over $16 million in contributions—an astronomical sum for the time. This led to the Tillman Act of 1907, which banned corporate contributions to federal campaigns, and the Publicity Act (Federal Corrupt Practices Act) of 1910, which mandated disclosure of campaign spending.

The modern framework for campaign finance regulation began with the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971, which was substantially amended in 1974 in response to Watergate. FECA created the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and established comprehensive disclosure requirements and spending limits. However, the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo fundamentally altered this framework by establishing that while contributions could be limited to prevent corruption, spending by individuals or groups could not be restricted under the First Amendment.

This distinction between contributions and spending was further entrenched and expanded in the 1978 Supreme Court decision First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. The majority opinion, written by Justice Lewis Powell—author of the influential 1971 Powell Memorandum that called for corporate America to take a more aggressive role in shaping political and legal discourse—struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting corporations from spending money to influence ballot measure campaigns.

Powell’s opinion established that corporate spending on political issues deserved First Amendment protection, regardless of the speaker’s corporate identity. This decision marked a crucial step toward recognizing corporate political spending as protected speech, laying important groundwork for Citizens United three decades later. The Bellotti ruling, combined with Buckley’s distinction between contributions and spending, created a framework that increasingly protected corporate political influence while limiting direct contributions to candidates.

Money = speech. This is the turning point.

This distinction between contributions and spending has remained a central pillar of campaign finance law, leading to increasingly creative ways to channel money into politics. The introduction of “soft money” in 1979 allowed national parties to accept unlimited donations for “party-building” activities, while the rise of what are called “527” organizations in the 2000s provided another avenue for unrestricted political spending.

There was another key Supreme Court decision in 1990 under Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce that held aspects of campaign finance regulations together that was specifically attacked by Citizens United (CU).

CU invalidated restrictions on corporate independent expenditures in elections, granting corporations the ability to use general funds for political advertising. The court ruled that corporate spending didn’t give rise to corruption and that it didn’t matter one way or another because corporations had the same free speech rights under the First Amendment as people.

So now think of all the work we’ve done covering the neoliberal movement, especially from the ‘70s forward. The think tanks, conservative news, political action committees, model legislation, manufactured consent. These things all take money and the shadowy figures who architected the system from the Koch brothers forward were the suppliers. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s these billionaire-funded organizations began working together to craft policies that found their way into state legislative actions and federal law, and by the early 2000s alarm bells were going off in DC and around the country that Democracy was for sale to the highest bidder.

A significant attempt at reform came in 2002 with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as McCain-Feingold. This legislation represented the most ambitious effort to control campaign spending since FECA, explicitly prohibiting party soft money and imposing new disclosure requirements on “electioneering communications”—broadcast ads naming candidates aired just before an election.

The Act also introduced the familiar “Stand By Your Ad” requirement, mandating that candidates state their approval in campaign advertisements. While the Supreme Court largely upheld the law in McConnell v. FEC (2003), subsequent decisions began to chip away at its provisions. The 2007 ruling in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC allowed corporations and unions to run certain ads just before elections, opening the door for relatively unregulated “issue ads.” This erosion of McCain-Feingold’s protections set the stage for its eventual gutting by Citizens United.

This passage from Adam Jentleson’s book Kill Switch brings is loaded with irony. Mitch McConnell was one of the central figures trying to undo McCain-Feingold, especially after the resounding midterm election defeat in 2008 under his leadership.

“Reversing what had been one of the biggest setbacks of McConnell’s career, the courts changed gears on campaign finance, taking his side of McCain’s in the corruption debate and unleashing a flood of corporate money into American politics. In 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit decided that corporate donations to groups that pretended to be focused on issues but were really focused on politics were not corrupting, unless there was an explicit quid pro quo between the donor and the politician. The decision was authored by Judge Brett Kavanaugh. On the heels of his ruling, the Supreme Court overturned its own 2003 decision in McConnell’s case against McCain-Feingold. In 2010, it handed down Citizens United v. Federal Election commission, making McConnell’s narrow definition of corruption the law of the land.”

We all know how Kavanaugh was rewarded for his work on the DC Circuit. But it’s funny how Mitch McConnell stands virtually alone among his GOP colleagues in the Senate standing not-so-firmly against the whims of Donald Trump. His challenges and maneuverings led us to the watershed moment in 2010 with Citizens United v. FEC, which effectively eliminated restrictions on corporate independent expenditures by extending First Amendment protections to corporate political spending.

And that was the ballgame.

Chapter Three: Media Complicity. The Revolution Was Already Televised.

There’s another major player in all of this that doesn’t get as much scrutiny as the dastardly mustache-twirling billionaires and the grimy politicians they purchase. We know how think tanks use earned media as soft targets to build consensus for bad policy over years and years. How lobbyists carry the water for corporations by darkening the doorways of representatives in Congress. This is dirty work. The hand-to-hand combat of good old fashion back scratching and back room deals. But the big money generated by the Super PACs and other dark money sources has to land somewhere. And that’s where media complicity in all of this has to come into focus.

Perhaps the biggest tacit support of Citizens United and modern campaign finance schemes is the media itself. Ultimately, they’re the beneficiaries of the whole gambit.

The Wesleyan Media Project in collaboration with OpenSecrets and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation identified nearly $4.5 billion in TV and radio advertising in federal and gubernatorial campaigns alone. “Over $3.4 billion of that total was committed to local broadcast or national network advertising. An additional $770 million was committed to television ads on local and national cable networks.”

When it examined digital advertising, they tracked political ads to the two largest recipients—Google and Meta—and found that Harris far exceeded Trump’s expenditures with total spending of $293 million by Harris to Trump’s $65 million.

De Gruyter, an independent academic publisher from Germany, found that midterm election spending has also grown dramatically and relentlessly since Citizens United. Issue related ads in the 2018 election cycle were dominated by Democrats and “outside groups sponsored about 35% of all ads in House races, and they sponsored about 40% of ads in Senate races, both record highs.”

With more financial reporting and post-election tallies, Wesleyan experts have even revised their figures slightly to suggest that overall media spending in the 2024 election may have topped $5 billion. This kind of revenue is significant to organizations such as Fox Corp. which reported a 19% increase in the quarter ending December 31, 2024 over the previous-year period. The company reversed an operating loss of $138 million in the previous-year period by posting an operating profit of $205 million on $1.96 billion in ad revenue. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said, “A compelling fall sports schedule combined with a record-breaking presidential election news cycle resulted in results that reflect the strength and breadth of Fox.”

It’s more difficult to isolate the effect of ad revenue on a company like Comcast because of the size of its portfolio. It’s a $123 billion revenue generating monster with holdings like NBC, Universal Studios, Peacock streaming services and, of course, Comcast Cable and its affiliates. But regardless of how big an entity is, no boardroom is going to promote the idea of election reform when there are hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. When people talk about the political economy, this is the most visible aspect of it. The sheer volume of spending and reckless ad placements on your social media feeds, television screens and radio speakers isn’t something they’ll be anxious to part with. Yet another reason these efforts require grassroots support, because the media establishment certainly won’t lend a helping hand.

Chapter Four: Defying Its Creator. The Tale of Mitch McGolem

The current state of campaign finance calls to mind the cautionary tale of the Golem from Jewish folklore—a powerful creature created to protect its community that ultimately grows beyond its creator’s control. Just as the Golem, animated by sacred words, becomes an uncontrollable force that threatens even those it was meant to serve, the dark money apparatus engineered by establishment politicians has evolved into an autonomous political force that now often defies its creators’ will.

This dynamic is perhaps best exemplified by Senator Mitch McConnell, who championed the dismantling of campaign finance restrictions through cases like Citizens United, only to find himself unable to control the forces he helped unleash—whether in the form of Donald Trump’s populist takeover of the Republican Party or Elon Musk’s increasing influence over political discourse despite having no formal role in the party structure.

The post-Citizens United era has seen an explosion in political spending through organizations that operate outside traditional party structures. In 2023, the Cambridge University Press published a white paper from UC Professor Stan Oklobdzija titled Dark Parties: Unveiling Nonparty Communities in American Political Campaigns. It’s an incredible piece of research that compiles data from both the FEC and the IRS to more accurately project election spending, since much of the outside campaign money is hidden in a complex web of shell corporations and disclosure rules are themselves fairly opaque.

In the paper he addresses the fundamental shift in the relationship between interest groups and political parties. Until Citizens United, most of us were operating under the “Extended Party Network (EPN)” theory that special interest groups were just extensions of political parties. The paper argues that the EPN theory may now be inverted with parties playing subordinate roles to monied interests. Sounds like a difference without a distinction but we’re living this reality now and this is not what those in the political system thought they were creating.

“In the age of dark money, parties are no longer the only organizations pulling the purse strings. Aspirants for elected office can now look to nonparty organizations for both cash assistance and support with crucial campaign functions that were once the sole purview of party organizations. As such, party organizations have begun to lose not just their mediator role for political money, but a major tool for disciplining recalcitrant candidates and luring wavering office seekers toward a common set of policies and political rhetoric. Given that dark money organizations are largely ideological interest groups, this shift in the balance of financial power may also incentivize a shift away from the conciliatory and accommodating politics of party coalition building toward the more hard-line, purist politics of groups dedicated to the pursuit of rigid ideological goals.”

This transformation is evident in recent examples, such as Peter Thiel’s influence in selecting and molding JD Vance, or Elon Musk’s DOGE committee operating without accountability to Congress or the American people. Project 2025 as proxy for the GOP platform. The major parties themselves have lost significant control over their constitutional authority, forced to bend to the whims of outside money.

Oklobdzija cites several studies, however, that prove the diminishing returns of campaign cash on ad spending in the media. We have our own empirical study that proves this thesis as well; the Harris Campaign outspent the Trump campaign and she’s unemployed now. However, he does also cite studies that thus far show, “dark money organizations are most effective in information-poor environments—such as low-profile elections or elections in areas of the country with sparse media coverage.”

Now pair this with declining test scores among Americans and the GOP response to this phenomenon being to dismantle the Department of Education rather than try to improve education. Information poor environments are their bread and butter.

If McConnell is actually the rabbi in our story, then Russell Vought of Project 2025 fame and current budget director of the United States is our Golem.

Even if by some twist of fate or miracle Mitch McConnell saw the error of his ways and wanted to restore Democracy and put everything back to the way it was, he couldn’t. And that’s the kicker to this whole thing. Whether it’s Golem, or Prometheus or Frankenstein—whatever your preferred cultural fable—the story is as old as time. And it will take a supernatural force to combat the destructive impact of dark money.

Traditional reform measures, including public financing schemes, are wholly inadequate in the face of this new reality. Public financing of elections won’t cut it alone because that’s only for candidate spending and doesn’t tackle outside groups. Legislative attempts at reforming the system will be struck down by the Supreme Court’s own rationale every time. It’s over. They’ve won. Golem has been released and the only way to shut it down is to take its power from the source.

We have to go even further to pre Andrew Jackson days to even rebuff the sentiments of our beloved founders; our slave owning, drug addled, godless founders who envisaged public service as an obligation of the landed gentry. We have to include personal finances in this equation because we have built a system that allowed for wealth accumulation that could reanimate Madison’s corpse.

Bluntly, if we put everything back to the original framework, then Jeff Bezos could theoretically purchase the presidency with pocket change.

No, it has to be wholesale reform. And the only way to do that is to take over the Democratic Party, win some fucking landslide elections, put Republicans in their place and begin the long and worthwhile journey of passing the first meaningful amendment since the elimination of polls taxes under the 24th Amendment in 1964.

Think about the timeline to truly appreciate how hard they’ve worked at this.

Buckley/Valeo in ‘74, Bellotti in ‘76, Austin in ‘90, McConnell in ‘03, Wisconsin in ‘07 and Citizens United in 2010. Threads pulled one by one. Billionaire funded activists and think tanks waiting patiently for courts to turn conservative; political leaders seizing on moments like Antonin Scalia’s death to pull unprecedented moves like forestalling an appointment for nearly a year.

In the background, the parties were colluding to erect barriers to third party entry, having learned their lesson from the gains of Ralph Nader and Ross Perot. They created artificial debate participation thresholds by privatizing the presidential commission on debates. Created high financial and signature thresholds on state levels to preclude third parties from gaining ballot access. They’ve even started outlawing ranked choice voting in Republican dominated state legislatures.

Republicans have consolidated their power and Democrats have signed their own death warrant by constructing an apparatus designed to suppress new ideas. Democrats even went so far as to actively shut down dissent through political means by barring primary challenges in key states. And in doing so they have left us with no other option than to orchestrate an administrative coup.

Bring it Home, Max.

An administrative coup. Sounds boring. But this is what we’ve been building to in the series.

Like the proposed 4B movement to withhold sex and dating, we need to hold out on Democrats. They cannot earn back our votes without adhering to our “Non-Negotiables,” specifically the first three. Shelter, work and healthcare together are the minimum price of admission to earn back our support, but not our trust. That comes later. That makes three more policies than the entire Harris campaign was able to think of, and we have precious little time to coalesce around these issues.

In doing so, we’re leaving a lot on the table to be taken up once in power. And this is where the platform can expand. But insofar as the Democrats lack a cohesive vision and message that will resonate with the American people, this strategy provides a simple and tangible prescription for positive change. And it will resonate because, as I’ve promised, the Trump administration is poised to bring the entire system crashing down in its relentless pursuit of cutting $4.5 trillion from the federal budget in order to pay for tax cuts.

Project 2025 is designed to disorient the public and create such chaos that somehow these tax cuts make sense. But they don’t and they won’t because people are going to start feeling the pain even more than they’re experiencing now.

The damage inflicted by the Trump administration, for all the reasons we’ve enumerated in prior essays, will be swift and deep. It will cut to the bone domestically and the rest of the world will falter when the U.S. consumer once again retreats like 350 million groundhogs who saw their shadows. If we don’t have the three core Non-Negotiables locked and loaded and spread widely by the mid-terms, then winning 2028 will be a pyrrhic victory because four straight years of Republican control will be an even bigger catastrophe. Every election cycle that passes us by is a missed opportunity on a scale we haven’t seen in a very, very long time.

And that brings us to getting money out of politics.

The only way to change this is to fundamentally reshape modern American politics. Every attempt at reform will fail because the highest court in the land has determined that corporations are people and campaign cash is free speech. Game, set, match. Every suit that challenges expenditures, fundraising or both will be struck down on this judicial precedent. And if you think that changing the composition of the court is the winning strategy then you really better buckle up for the long haul.

The average tenure of a Supreme Court Justice since 1993 is now 28 years. If Trump coerces Samuel Alito into retirement and Harlan Crow coerces Clarence Thomas, then Trump will have the ability to appoint two more justices to the court, which will actuarially guarantee a conservative court for the next 25 years. Therefore the only way to get money out of politics is by way of a Constitutional Amendment. There are a handful of disparate efforts to support this already (e.g. CampaignFinanceReform.org, American Promise) and, of course, Bernie has a bill ready to go. None of them are perfect so we have time to hash this out.

My primary critique of the leading initiatives from American Promise and Bernie is that they leave too much to the discretion of Congress. In my view, the specifics of the text must accomplish a few things.

Regarding Speech

• Limit speech protections to natural persons. This is central to most initiatives and negates the central problem of Citizens United.

Regarding Campaign Spending

• Prohibit all non-individual, natural person spending on candidates or election issues. No more PACs or Super PACs. No more non-profit advocacy because we have dark money groups masquerading as non-profits. No more corporations. Period. This would even extend to unions, which is where I differ from Bernie. Bernie’s argument is that unions expressly represent natural persons and should therefore be an extension of personhood. I disagree. Unions and other advocacy groups retain the right to lobby and have built-in platforms to advocate for candidates without committing funds to candidates. If we’re doing this we have to do it all the way and be consistent.
• Allow Congress to determine federal campaign spending limits every 10 years, with thresholds adjusted for inflation in the intervening years. This accounts for new methods of information dissemination that were previously unknown and unaccounted for.
• Give states the right to determine spending limits in a similar fashion—we’re going to need their support to ratify the bill—but maintain fundraising thresholds as expressed in this amendment.

Regarding Fundraising Activities

• Restore the individual donation caps on all candidates and parties. This schedule would be established by the amendment and apply to all local, municipal, state and federal elections. Increases would be tied to the same inflation formula that governs spending thresholds.
• Self-funded candidates would adhere to the same limits.
• Public Financing of presidential elections would continue but funds would be distributed to individual parties based upon the allocation of balloted states.

Regarding Disclosures

• Every political donation would require full transparency.
• Campaigns would be required to disclose all fundraising activities monthly from the formation of its committee.
• Donations would be prohibited in the 40 days prior to the election with final disclosure filings required 10 days prior to the election.

We don’t need a political economy. We can’t endure corporate media with a stake in campaign spending. We can’t afford elections subject to legislative and judicial whims. The only way to accomplish this is to amend the Constitution, something that has proven to be incredibly difficult in this country for several decades.

The last Amendment ratified by the states was in 1992 but it was introduced in Congress in 1789. (If you’re not familiar with the story behind the 27th Amendment, it’s pretty fucking awesome so look it up—it was about Congressional compensation.)

The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971. You get the point. Amendments aren’t a thing we really do anymore, which is why it will take a Herculean effort by one party that is in such favor it has the ability to pass with a 3/4 majority in Congress and the states.

At this moment, which party do you think is more likely to make this happen? The one that can’t get out of its own fucking way to beat a convicted felon and proven sex offender who tried to overthrow the government? Or the one that has been working assiduously for 70 fucking years to overthrow our democracy one law, one precinct, on federal judge at a time?

Checkers and chess.

Knowing the electorate is so poisoned by the propagandistic right wing media and the disappointing mediocrity of the liberals, the Democrats will have a hard time mustering a supermajority let alone 3/4. But we did it in 1965 and almost did it again in 2009. So it’s doable. Knowing that, Democrats have to do big, popular and tangible shit that makes people feel secure and valued. Then we can do some gangster shit.

Run on Medicare for All, a Civilian Labor Corps and Housing First, and Democrats will win. Get these things passed into law and they’ll run the table. And then, you hold a gun to the bandleader’s head and make the Republicans an offer they can’t refuse. Either we reinstitute a 90% tax bracket on high income earners or we get the 28th Amendment to get money out of politics completely. That’s when we put a mass organizing effort together and take to the streets with a singular demand: Pass the 28th.

Here endeth the lesson.