Money, Politics And trump

Unusual amongst liberal democracies, the US makes minimal efforts to curb the influence of money in politics.? As a constitutional republic, legal precedent has a lot to do with this.? Starting with the Bill of Rights, for which Britain's 1689 Bill of Rights was a template.

The British law was an Act of Parliament and therefore necessarily subject to the legislative whims of any subsequent parliament.? The much more individually-focused and inherently liberal US Bill of Rights is a constitutional right, changeable only by amendment to the constitution or (perversely and very recently) by interpretation of the Supreme Court.? Given the ludicrous and utterly ahistorical conception of presidential criminal immunity recently conjured up by the Court, something with no textual support, anything is perhaps now possible in the US.

Ever since the early 1800s (eg Trustees of Dartmouth College vs Woodward) US corporations have increasingly been granted the rights of personhood.? While there is a strong argument in every incremental case for legal protections for corporations (Dartmouth vs Woodward concerned the rights of corporations to enter into contracts) the Supreme Court has consistently failed to draw any bright line between the rights of people, especially as political actors, and the rights of corporations as pools of capital or as institutional structures.

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In the 1970s, the landmark case Buckley vs Vallejo in effect established the principle that money equals speech.? There are at least a couple of blatant errors with this decision, first that speech and political speech are the same thing (they are not - I can be free to advertise my used cars without necessarily being free to campaign for politicians who will scrap lemon laws) and second that money in politics is speech (it is not - it is a megaphone.? As a billionaire, I can hire surrogates, pay for TV ads, buy channels, you name it.? All to magnify my voice and policy positions alone. Mr Musk's current shenanigans in several US states make this point perfectly).

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Since Buckley the situation in the US has escalated towards higher and higher spending with every election cycle, billions of dollars being disbursed in the 2020 cycle, or around $100 per household.

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The challenge for widespread electoral participation is that most families in the US are poor.? A 2022 survey (US Federal Reserve Well Being Survey) suggested that almost 40% of US households couldn't afford a $400 emergency.? This strongly suggests that only a minority of US households are today likely to be election donors. While 2024 electoral spending could be as much as $16 billion versus $3 billion in 2000.

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The implications for the US political parties are clear.? Go where the money is.? This was always (post WW2 at least) the line of attack for the Republican Party, and since the days of Clinton has increasingly been the ploy of the Democratic Party.? With capital safe inside our democracy, politics increasingly played out on a social-cultural dimension until the financial crisis.

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The 2009 global financial crisis laid bare numerous problems in economic and political systems.? I'm not talking about capital flows and fraudulent national accounting but about legislative capture.? In the US, the poster child for financial malfeasance, the banks were bailed out with essentially no meaningful sanctions, their executives were left rich, while impoverished home owners were left to twist in the wind.? Small wonder there was a backlash.

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Yes, the response was organised by the ultrawealthy (step forward and take a bow, the Koch Foundation) but they were tilling fertile ground.? After all, how could the Democrats bite the hand that fed them?? And all the while, before and after the crisis, small town America was being remorselessly hollowed out by private capital shipping jobs offshore, by union busting, and by automation.? None of which was effectively opposed by the Democrats because of the party's need for electoral cash.

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So, come 2016, there was a huge amount of anger in the US and it needed a home.? The coasts were and continue to be for the most part fine but many inland areas and the industrial and farming heartland were hurting.? This fact, plus the October Surprise delivered by James Comey* and Cambridge Analytica's negative campaigning, helped to steer Donald Trump to triumph in the electoral college.

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Today, the electoral battle is in large part a financial battle with ideas relegated to afterthoughts.? And on the one hand, Donald Trump has proven his dictatorial bona fides while on the other hand, he is promising lord only knows what to the handful of billionaires able to offer ready cash.? Meanwhile, he is able to sing his (remarkably effective and well-rehearsed) populist tune while the mirthless Democrats are equally forced to bend a knee to the ultra-rich.

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For the truly wealthy, this ought to be an easy choice.?? A consummate liar who has sold everyone he ever dealt with down the river, versus a party that will need you again in four years.? Yet amazingly, Mr Trump has bamboozled many fat cats into handing over millions.

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And for the rest of us, participatory politics is increasingly a spectator sport, at least at the macro level.? Local campaigning has its place but unless conducted by organised groups (step forward trade unions, enjoying a mini-renaissance under President Biden) or hired by the ultra-rich (the Musk get-out-the-vote 2024 project is a poster child) the average American is virtually irrelevant in modern politics.

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In this climate, the messianic rantings of a populist proto-tyrant like Mr Trump carry extra weight.? Who wants to back institutionalists when it's institutions that are seen as part of the problem?? Needless to say, all such considerations will go out of the window if Mr Trump proves to be as authoritarian as he promises, but by then democracy will be in the ICU if not dead and buried.

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Yet for all of this I do not fault the Republicans.? The Republican Party understood for decades, far better than Democrats, the exercise of power.? As late as 2021 the Democrats could have fixed many of their structural weaknesses in the US electoral system, rendering illegal congressional gerrymandering, voter suppression, restrictions on registration, and the biased stacking of the Supreme Court.? Yet they accomplished none of these achievable reforms.? And why?? Ultimately, some key members were unable to see the changed rules of the game, while others were in thrall to electoral cash.? In one week we will see where our republic lands - as I type I sense it is even money on the outcome - but either way, the Democrats need to find a way to recover legitimacy in the eyes of the average voter if the party is to recapture its post-World War 2 electoral power.

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[* Lest we forget:? in June 2016, in the run-up to the presidential election, Bill Clinton held a 30 minute no-witnesses meeting with the attorney general Loretta Lynch on board her official jet.? In the aftermath, Ms Lynch was compelled by Justice Department ethics standards to recuse herself from the investigation into Hilary Clinton, leaving James Comey in charge.? And it was the politically callow Comey who sprang the last-minute electoral surprise on Hilary Clinton.? Worth remembering how it came to be.]

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