It presents a slight problem when the ones they’re bringing in to deal with the shitty politicians are the people who paid them to be shitty in the first place.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    75·
    2 days ago

    with a 1995 bill outlawing large donations (which was passed in 2002

    That only went thru due to Enron crashing, and was a bipartisan effort from McCain and Feingold that was already in the works, they just didn’t have the numbers till Enron’s checks stopped…

    And it directly led to PACs…

    Two senators, Republican John McCain and Democrat Russell Feingold, had a bill to ban soft money. When Enron collapsed in scandal in 2001, McCain and Feingold had enough support to make the bill law.

    Feingold addressed the Senate just before the vote on final passage. “In this moment, we can show the American people that we are the Senate that they want us to be,” he said.

    McCain-Feingold pushed soft money out of the national parties, and a lot of it landed in new bank accounts at small nonprofit groups. These were groups that couldn’t coordinate with candidates or party committees, but that shared the same partisan agenda.

    https://www.npr.org/2009/12/25/121872329/decade-brought-change-to-campaign-finance

    And the wealthy immediately struck back.

    In 2004, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth crippled the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. And in 2008 groups challenged the integrity of both presidential contenders and plenty of congressional candidates. The attacks are meaner, but these groups — unlike the political parties — aren’t accountable to anyone.

    That is widely recognized as when Republicans went off the deep end.

    Get 60 Dem senators and watch it get fixed.

    Don’t assume everyone with a D by their name is on your side just because at the national level these days everyone with an R is on the other side.

    If we need 60 votes to fix this, and we have 60+, expect just as many to act like Manchin as needed to bring that number down to 59.

    We need to treat primaries serious so that if the day comes and we have 60, it gets done.

    Because if we have 60 and it doesn’t get done, it’ll crash turnout.

    Just like it did when we were told Biden and 50 senators could get shit done.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        26·
        2 days ago

        That is widely recognized as when Republicans went off the deep end.

        Obviously it wasn’t an overnight switch, although my phrasing is more often used for a sudden change, it was a gradual one over decades so I should have used something else.

        But Democrats being better than Republicans on average for decades doesn’t mean every Democrat is good now. And every Republican being shit now doesn’t mean that was always the case.