this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
218 points (98.2% liked)

politics

18883 readers
3325 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
  2. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  3. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  4. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
  5. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  6. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News

• World News

• Business News

• Political Discussion

• Ask Politics

• Military News

• Global Politics

• Moderate Politics

• Progressive Politics

• UK Politics

• Canadian Politics

• Australian Politics

• New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
outrageousmatter@lemmy.world
aidan@lemmy.world
jordanlund@lemmy.world
HLMenckenFan@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
218
GOP salivates at the biggest campaign finance win since Citizens United (www.politico.com)
submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Republicans have waged a decades-long battle to blow up the campaign-finance laws that rein in big-money spending. Now, they are making a play that could end in their biggest victory since the Citizens United ruling in 2010.

The GOP is growing increasingly optimistic about their prospects in a little-noticed lawsuit that would allow official party committees and candidates to coordinate freely by removing current spending restrictions. If successful, it would represent a seismic shift in how tens of millions of campaign dollars are spent and upend a well-established political ecosystem for TV advertising.

An eventual victory in the lawsuit, filed last November by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, would eliminate the need for House and Senate campaign committees of any party to set up separate operations to make so-called independent expenditures to boost candidates with TV ads.

top 17 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Hazdaz@lemmy.world 59 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The biggest issue here isn't even this campaign finance change.

The biggest issue is that once again Republicans push a decades-long battle.

Conservatives play the long game. They push their agenda for years and decades at a time until it starts to stick.

Liberals can't focus on one topic for more than a few weeks or months before they jump onto the next big travesty that they try (but usually fail) to solve. The Left has the attention plan of a goldfish.

There's a reason why RvW has been thrown out, gun laws are the loosest they've been in decades and campaign finance changes happen, while we still don't have universal healthcare, parental leave, mandatory minimum holidays, etc. One side can look at the big picture and plan their strategy over many, many years, while the other side is endlessly losing focus by jumping to some fake crisis after another and never accomplishing anything.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 61 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Liberals can’t focus on one topic for more than a few weeks or months before they jump onto the next big travesty

No, it's more that there are a diverse group of liberals all trying to get attention for whatever issue their pocket is trying to address. The conservatives only care about one issue: Being at the top of the hierarchy. This means they're all working toward similar, reinforcing goals.

It's not an attention span issue. It's a divergent needs issue.

[–] Hazdaz@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah, and which one gets things done? Maybe the Left should wake the fuck up and realize that focusing in on a handful of issues COLLECTIVELY will go a hell of a lot further than a million smaller issues focused in on by dozens of different sub-groups.

Conservatives get shit done by falling in-line and accepting that what is good for the larger group will help smaller conservative groups in the long run. A rising tide raises all ships.

[–] Neato@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, and which one gets things done?

The ones committing crimes and that cheats. The one that throws out centuries and decades old procedural traditions of our legislative body. The one trying to hurt as many people and burn the country down as fast as possible to get their agenda in so they can perform a coup.

I'm sorry Democrats aren't burning the country at both ends to succeed, but that's generally not what non-traitors do.

[–] MajorJimmy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Play by the book, lose to the ones who burned it.

[–] norb@lem.norbz.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

(I am US based and this is my US based argument - please do not EuroTroll me)

But herein lies the problem. "Progressive" often means new or novel. Conservative mostly means "preserve the status quo." (I'm over simplifying for the sake of making a point, I know).

Conservatives are willing to sit on the status quo and work against change as they can. Progressives want to right wrongs NOW and make effective changes for the future. Unfortunately, because our society grows and changes quickly, and what is right today can be wrong tomorrow and the target moves, so progressive goals also move. Meanwhile conservatives are still plugging away at keeping the status quo.

I'm trying to say that the nature of progressives is to change goals and make things better, which makes it harder to coalesce around one goal for 10, 20, 40+ years. When your target is the past, its easy to keep that in sight as you go forward.

[–] SCB@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Cool! Come join my team and let's get shit done. Here's my top 10.

1: federal ban on rent control and single family zoning. Ideally, end all zoning and let the market sort it out

2: free trade agreements with all non-sanctioned trade partners

3: immigration reform - you set foot on US soil and you're on a path to citizenship. End all deportations except for those on the path that also commit specified crimes

4: 0% corporate tax rate. Failing that, corporate taxes as low an international pressures allow

5: raise income taxes on the top 3 quintiles, and raise capital gains taxes, progressively. Increase property taxes substantially via adding a new federal property tax of X% of the unimproved value of the land.

6: federal ban on drug testing except in the case of injury or malpractice in the workplace, or as part of a parole/probation arrangement

7: federal mandate that states tie minimum wage to county cost of living, with biannual updates

8: public option for health care provided by an 18% increase in income taxes, in addition to the tax increases mentioned above. Include language that total employee compensation packages may not be altered as part of this policy. Employees pocket what employers are currently spending on healthcare.

9: Union reform. End right to work and legislate new laws that control how unions operate and when they are overstepping their bounds

10: criminal justice reform that builds upon the 13th amendment and forces penal work paid at minimum wage instead of prison time for all/nearly all non-violent offenses and some violent offenses

I'm going to bet you disagree with some or many of these, and that's why we don't have 1 lockstep party.

That's the difference between the two parties. We have fundamental disagreements, as democrats++, in how problems should be solved. Republicans fall in line behind "fuck democrats."

[–] Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Will Rogers said it best, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."

[–] Ertebolle@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

OK, but:

upend a well-established political ecosystem for TV advertising

boost candidates with TV ads

Even my Boomer parents are going streaming-only now; political consultants still love TV ads because they make lots of money off of them, and the need to spend lots of money on TV also powers the small-dollar fundraising / "can you rush me $17 RIGHT NOW" machine from which all sorts of awful people likewise take a generous cut, but how much of an impact is this actually likely to have?

[–] wrath-sedan@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The article note that actual voters probably won’t see much of a difference. The main effect is an even more direct big donor to candidate money pipeline that will mean they’ll have even more influence than they already do.

Plus precedent of course, I imagine it’s usually easier to chip away at campaign finance regulations when you can cite other cases as evidence, but I’m no lawyer.

[–] Ertebolle@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure, but isn't big donor influence largely due to how much their money can swing elections? If TV ads fade in importance and you can saturate your audience with cheaper targeted internet ones, rich guys are reduced to regular old bribery and you can only go on so many junkets a year.

[–] wrath-sedan@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s probably a trend but according to this (sorry dumb paywalled stats site but the relevant bit is in the free overview) as of now Broadcast TV is still the largest political ad market.

[–] Ertebolle@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

That's actually kind of my point - they're spending the money on something that gets less effective every year, and it's not clear if there's any other expense that'll replace it. And most politicians hate fundraising, so if they can mount an equally effective campaign with less money I expect an awful lot of them will do so.

[–] MedicatedMaybe@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

The USA's days as a "democratic republic" are numbered. The only thing we can do is slow down the decent a little bit. Don't fool yourself that this country isn't on a fast track to christofascism. Its game man. Not only are we dealing with it from within we also have china and Russia foaming at the mouth with how successful their propaganda has been. 40 percent of this country is cheering it on and can't wait to become the spitting image of Russia.

Things are going to get a lot worse and I think it will happen faster than you think. Look how fast Florida took..... It was a swing state not long ago. Now it's one of the testing spots for how fascism will work in this country.

If you aren't a white Christian male you better figure out how to pretend to be one. Or at the very least get out of red states while you can if you can.

Because it doesn't seem like anybody in this country is willing to really fight against it. Off to the next thing I'm outraged about for a week and then moving on.

The new world order is coming and it's going to suck even worse.

Vote like your life depends on it because it just might.