Multi-Billion Dollar Democracy
I see that the Harris/Walz team is touting that they have raised $540 million from donors (mostly small donors) in the last month or so (basically, since Harris announced). That seems like a lot of money to me, so I looked it up and was surprised with what I found. On a website called USA Facts, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan civic initiative that seeks to make government data easy for all to access, I found an abundance of data. The cycle they tend to measure is a two-year one that runs through the calendar years 2023 and 2024. There are three sources of funding for the electoral campaigns. The largest is Political Action Committees (PACs), which represent 65% of the funding. Those can be Traditional PACs with donation and spending limits to keep some semblance of even-handedness based on the means of the electorate. The other type of PAC is the Super PAC, which are the result of the infamous Citizens United case in 2010, which made it possible for these Super PACs to raise an unlimited amount of money from individuals and corporations so long as they do not contribute directly to candidates rather than advocate more broadly for political issues through advertising and other means. Then there is the traditional and direct source of candidate fundraising for presidential, senate and House of Representatives campaigns.
As of April 2024, the total raised from these three sources is about $8.6 billion, which, if we extrapolate, should mean a total cyclical raise of more than $13 billion. This is all in addition to federally funded election grants which range from match funding to Form 1040 $3 allocations, all of which total an estimated $124 million for 2024. At this point only about half of the $8.6 billion has yet to be spent, so it is safe to say that between now and the election on November 5th, we will all be inundated by political advertising and on-the-ground electioneering. For what it is worth, Kim and I are trying to do our part by participating in the postcard sending project. The theory is that if we can personalize some handwritten postcards to voters in swing states like Arizona (our state of choice given its proximity), it might help sway some on-the-fence voters to recognize the commitment many of us have to seeing that this election gets pushed away from Trump and toward Harris. That is an important part of what Michelle Obama called the “Do something!” approach to this all-important election. I believe the enthusiasm to push things away from Trump are as strong or stronger than ever right now. What is somewhat newer is that now there is an added push towards Harris specifically as she has made such a strong case for her candidacy and generated so much enthusiasm for her actual enunciated stances on key policy issues.
I understand that the amounts involved only represents 0.03% of U.S. GDP and 0.14% of the Federal budget, but to quote ex-Congressman Everett Dirksen a Republican from Illinois, “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”. I am honestly appalled that we are at a place in this country where we spend that sort of money on politics because it is unclear that it is a productive expenditure. I understand that right now the Harris campaign is running way ahead of the Trump campaign in fundraising and that is what perhaps makes it the best time to come out strong against the practice. On the assumption that political campaign spending is more or less equivalent and similarly effective, what sense can it possibly make to spend money on something that, by its nature, cancels itself out. Some will argue that it is no different than nuclear detente, but at least I can understand why we think that nuclear proliferation tends to keep global peace intact. But having two parties working to outspend one another spreading their message seems unnecessary. It would seem that a moderately set budget, perhaps using the power the government has over broadcasters and should have over social media companies would accomplish all the public service awareness-building that the electorate really needs. That approach might also serve to restrict the outreach focus on the real issues rather than the personality and cultural issues that often overwhelm the serious issues. It might also serve to minimize misinformation and outright deception, which has run rampant of late.
I have never been a believer in donating to politics. I have always felt that other charities deserve my excess resources much more than political campaign spending. That has changed over the last five years. I now regularly contribute and am on every fundraising list there is, it seems. I get many emails, texts and cell phone calls each day. Many I delete or respond with “Stop”, and some I even report as Junk, which seems like the harshest handling available. I tend to reserve that reporting for Republicans outreach, which I cannot understand based on any sense of target marketing that I can imagine. I tend now to only donate a modest amount to any candidate that bothers to call me personally and directly. I think that is more a personal vanity than any other rationale for donating. I have tacitly agreed to political donating based on the strength of our anti-Trump sentiment. It just feels like we have to do something and giving is the easiest way to satisfy that feeling. Kim and I have been looking for something more actionable to do and we now have that. We have signed up for the Democratic postcard writing program. Kim has gotten 300 and I have gotten 500 postcards to send to Arizonans. I was surprised to see that the postcards are blank. I would have thought they would pre-address them rather than just send us a list of addressees as they have. I don’t even address my Holiday cards anymore…and there are far less of those. In any case, we will be spending some of our free time filling out and sending those off to try and parlay some amount of electoral influence where and how we can.
If someone asked me if Democracy is worth a few billion dollars to preserve, I would obviously say that it certainly is. The problem is that I am unclear that political fundraising and campaign spending is particularly effective as a way to preserve Democracy. I would rather see some serious campaign finance reform that puts these national campaigns on the same basis as my university trustee elections. All candidates have a biography created by the university (that way, the factual verifiability is established) and then each candidate is allowed one paragraph statement they are allowed to write, sort of like a closing statement in a trial, where you can say whatever you want and let the electorate decide what they want to believe or not. I am not sure that we need to spend multi-billions of dollars to maintain our Democracy. Perhaps what we need more is just some common sense and simple awareness.