Jon Stewart's Epic Rant About Campaign Finance

I just caught up with the Daily Show and was delighted to see Jon Stewarts epic rant about the Supreme Court's decision in McCutcheon.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the case, he does a fairly decent job of explaining it.  Essentially, the court struck down the aggregate total of money that a person could spend during an election cycle while leaving the cap on how much you can give to any individual candidate.  This means that you can still only give $5,200 to a candidate for each election ($2,600 for the primary and another $2,600 for the general election) but now you can support every candidate running for office in the country.  This means that rich people can't donate $1 million dollars to a single candidate, but they can spread $1 million dollars around to 200 candidates.

As much as I like Jon Stewart and love to see him when he gets really riled up and as much as I agree with the sentiment behind his frustration, I don't think this is as dramatic of an attack on democracy as he makes it out to be.  Certainly it is nowhere near as bad as the Citizens United case that unleashed the floodgates of special interest donations towards super pacs.  He does point out that it is ridiculous to defend this law by pointing to one that is much worse; but there may be something to the idea that it has to get worse before it can get any better.

Let me begin my explanation by pointing out the Jon and I presumably want the same thing.  I assume that he, like I, would like to see public financing for all elections so that we can eliminate the wealth favoritism and potential for bribery and cronyism.  I don't like that the Supreme Court decided that money was speech, and allowed corporations and wealthy individuals to donate unlimited amounts of money to political super pacs.  They aren't supposed to coordinate with the candidates they support, but come on, how stupid do you think we are?  This decision was a double whammy because it not only gave unprecedented political access to the wealthiest people (at the cost of the rest of us) but it also means that the candidates themselves are no longer even accountable for the messages they produce.  The influx of money and the lack of transparency has led to some of the nastiest attack ads and most brutal campaigns.  I would be willing to bet that there is a statistically significant drop in our countries mental health during campaign season, it just can't be good for us to listen to and hear so much negativity.  There is no doubt that these are terrible laws.

Still, there is something to be said for letting wealthy donors contribute directly to campaigns instead of shuffling it through anonymous super pacs.  If we can at least have transparency and accountability we could make an improvement on what we are currently dealing with.  Plus, if the Supreme Court keeps breaking up the dam's that are holding back the cash, maybe things will get so bad that the people wake up and do something about it.  The only real chance we have to get public financing is through corruption.  It's a risky game we're playing, but i've always been a gambling man.