7 ms·

You can only say that without knowledge of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Prior to that I'd have agreed with you. It was tremendously successful at fundraising fr

You can only say that without knowledge of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Prior to that I'd have agreed with you. It was tremendously successful at fundraising from small dollar donations by pushing policies that benefit the many over the few. I don't see a reason why other campaigns can't pick that up and run with it.

stmfreak 9y ago
That was one guy amongst 536 politicians. And he lost because a corrupt system scuttled his campaign.
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  That is true, but the 535 other politicians are nearly all centrists or right wingers. Politicians are beholden to their donors. Eliminate the elite donor class, eliminate their interests being represented. I have some optimism that the Democratic party will be reconfigured to some degree. It's either that, or keep losing cyclically. FDR won four presidential elections and scared the right so badly that they got a constitutional amendment to limit future "damage" to two terms.
  - WaxProlix 9y ago
    So, GP says "Vote for people who aren't interested in taking bribes" and you say "eliminate the donor class" -- those seem like pretty distinct policy recommendations. How are they related?
    - SapphireSun 9y ago
      GP's literal words were "stop voting for people willing to take lobbyist money". The lobbyists and big donations / bundlers come from the same class of people - the wealthy. These dollars come attached with policy positions that favor that class both explicitly (in terms of policies that are explicitly favored) and implicitly (policies that will not be given strong support, i.e. various forms of redistribution). The only way to run a modern political campaign is with lots of cash, so the cash must be procured somehow. Your two options are to level the playing field with public funding of campaigns (unlikely to happen in the wake of Citizen's United) or for a candidate to raise small dollar donations. The Sanders campaign proved that the latter is possible.

stmfreak 9y ago

That was one guy amongst 536 politicians. And he lost because a corrupt system scuttled his campaign.

SapphireSun 9y ago
That is true, but the 535 other politicians are nearly all centrists or right wingers. Politicians are beholden to their donors. Eliminate the elite donor class, eliminate their interests being represented. I have some optimism that the Democratic party will be reconfigured to some degree. It's either that, or keep losing cyclically. FDR won four presidential elections and scared the right so badly that they got a constitutional amendment to limit future "damage" to two terms.
- WaxProlix 9y ago
  So, GP says "Vote for people who aren't interested in taking bribes" and you say "eliminate the donor class" -- those seem like pretty distinct policy recommendations. How are they related?
  - SapphireSun 9y ago
    GP's literal words were "stop voting for people willing to take lobbyist money". The lobbyists and big donations / bundlers come from the same class of people - the wealthy. These dollars come attached with policy positions that favor that class both explicitly (in terms of policies that are explicitly favored) and implicitly (policies that will not be given strong support, i.e. various forms of redistribution). The only way to run a modern political campaign is with lots of cash, so the cash must be procured somehow. Your two options are to level the playing field with public funding of campaigns (unlikely to happen in the wake of Citizen's United) or for a candidate to raise small dollar donations. The Sanders campaign proved that the latter is possible.