Super Tuesday came in with a fury but left with a whimper. Although the Democratic nominee remains unknown and the presumptive Republican nominee is John McCain, the horse race coverage of the money train continues unabated with little examination over how these mountains of money are affecting not only the presidential race but politics in general.
Besides announcing the winners and losers, the other headlines following Super Tuesday were that Obama raised $3 million in one day, and Hillary had to loan herself $5 million of her personal fortune, as if these were box-office receipts for the latest movie. Since last year, each Democratic candidate raised about $100 million, $53.6 million more than all the 2000 presidential candidates combined, and outspent the 2000 candidates by $138.1 million.
This isn’t just inflation. Running for our nation’s highest office is no longer an exercise in democracy but a lesson in finance. The first lesson is that public financing for political campaigns remains inadequate and outdated. Just look across the political landscape littered with the graves of every Democratic candidate that accepted public funds. The only two candidates who didn’t accept public funds are the last ones standing.
Although Obama deserves some credit for refusing lobbyist and PAC money as well as his impressive grassroots following of hundreds of thousands of supporters, he and the other candidates take an impressive sum from private companies. Hillary and McCain on the other hand have been the largest receipts of lobbyists’ dollars. Hillary is the hands down favorite with $823,000 compared to McCain’s $416,000.
These private companies come in and fill the gaping holes left by public financing. Obama’s largest contributor, to the tune of $421,763, is the Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, which not only invests but advises nearly every industry affected by federal legislation, such as economic policy and trade. The firm has also been the leading champion behind calls to privatize Social Security and deregulate the investment banking and securities industries. Goldman Sachs is also the No. 2 contributor to Hillary’s campaign with $401,561 and ranks as McCain’s fifth largest contributor. All together the finance, insurance and real estate industries, which Goldman Sachs is a part of, are the largest contributors to the 2008 presidential race with the astounding sum of $73.7 million. While these corporations have a right to lobby, their power and money give them a superior advantage over the “one person, one vote” of everyday citizens. Will the large sums of money that flowed through nearly every campaign continue to influence the next president of the United States?
The revolving door of politics with campaign donations translating to favorable legislation is not new to this presidential race. The finance and investment industries were some of the top industries that played a part in Bush’s campaign in 2000 and 2004. It was in his administration that calls for the privatization of Social Security was pushed forward not once but a number of times. The staggering sums from the oil and gas industry, nearly $2 million in 2000 and $2.6 million in 2004, also played a role in Bush’s refusal to address solutions to global warming as well as one of his first acts as president in withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol.
These are also the same industries that continue to push for legislation that is friendly to their bottom line without evaluating the impacts on the common people. The bankruptcy reform bill, which Congress aligned with the finance industry to make bankruptcy harder to emerge from, is just another glaring example of a pay-to-play system that is placing a strangle hold on our political process. Rather than focusing on whose bank account is bigger, an updated system of public financing is needed to wrestle the power from corporations and back into the hands of voters.
