Seattle Free Press

Reposted from Tiresias Speaks.

There are expected to be as many as 100 competitive races for House seats as well as 37 races for governor this year and according to the Associated Press, the latest financial reports show that House and Senate candidates have already raised 1.2 billion dollars in order to win those races. This is far ahead of the pace of the past several record-setting elections and the money is pouring into the coffers of both Democratic and Republican candidates alike. Despite the rhetoric from both sides of the aisle surrounding the ailing US economy and the need for fiscal responsibility, both parties seem unwilling to spare any expense when it comes to investing in their own self-preservation. So, why even as the US economy continues to shrink is 2010 on pace to be such a record-setting year?

Of course there is the fact that there is currently an especially bitter and divisive political climate within the United States, but that is hardly so different from any other election in at least the past decade. The more likely culprit is the Supreme Court’s ruling on January 21st of this year. The court ruled 5-4 that it was unconstitutional for the government to restrict corporate campaign contributions because they qualify as protected political speech under the first amendment. That historic ruling means that it is now open season for corporations and any other special interest group to give as much money as they see fit to any political cause. This does not mean we are going to see overt massive corporate donations and open corporate endorsements of political candidates. On the contrary, we haven’t seen this because most corporations are to afraid of the backlash that this might cause. To borrow from the Associated Press’ article:

“What we will see is corporations not wanting to anger their shareholders, not wanting to anger their retail customer by getting involved in partisan elections,” said Paul Ryan, a senior lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center. “Instead they will employ strategies to obscure the fact, or hide completely the fact that they are dumping money into politics by routing their money through groups like the Chamber of Commerce.”

The best part of this arrangement for corporations is that many of these “independent” organizations like the Chamber of Commerce are not required to make their donors public. In this way corporations can keep money flowing into Democratic and Republican candidates in order to influence policy without fear of repercussion. The Federal Election Commission has not yet written any rules regarding how to apply the court’s decision, so for the time being there are none. Corporations and anyone else can effectively contribute to campaigns in secret and the sky is the limit.

It is worth making it clear that the court’s ruling does not just apply strictly to corporations. In fact, any individual or group can now give as much money as they like to political candidates, but the reality is who has enough money to give to really make a difference? The answer is millionaires, billionaires, and the corporations they own. It is impossible to trumpet the Supreme Court’s ruling as an expansion of human freedom when it is so obvious that the vast majority of Americans can hardly spare a dime. While companies continue to downsize, say they can’t afford to hire new employees, and balk about having to help pay for employee’s health care it seems that they still somehow have enough money to make 2010 a record year for campaign contributions.

Meanwhile the rest of us would only be able to scrape together the occasional twenty, fifty, or maybe even a hundred dollars to contribute to a political campaign if we wanted to – but how far would that get us compared to the millions corporations can afford to spend? Who’s going to continue to have even more pull in Washington than they have already?

The answer is as obvious as it is disheartening: electoral politics in the US are typically just going to keep benefiting the rich.

The 2010 election 

WASHINGTON — Democrats desperately need other Democrats – to vote. – Liz Sidoti, of the Huffington Post 

The 2010 Senate elections are barely a month away, and Democrats across the country are getting worried. 

In a new poll released last month by Public Policy Polling, Quantifying the Enthusiasm Gap, pollsters have found that in 10 key Senate and gubernatorial races across the country, Republicans are leading by wider margins. 

Although the country is more or less split in half between Republican and Democratic party supporters when all eligible voters are asked (about 43% for both, according to the latest NBC/WSJ poll), when likely voters are polled, the Republicans take a substantial lead by roughly 9 points. 

“We have two ways of looking at the enthusiasm gap,” Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen said in an interview with Evan McMorris-Santoro. “Measuring whether voters are very, somewhat, or not at all excited about voting this fall, and then a step beyond that looking at how they voted for President in 2008. 

“”We’re consistently finding that very excited voters are going strongly toward the GOP while somewhat and not at all excited voters are supporting Democrats.” To readers of the Trial by Fire, this should be no surprise. Obama’s administration and the Democratic Party have made good on very little of what they promised during their campaigns, and formerly hysteric supporters of these campaigns are beginning to realize that the rhetoric of change the Democrats harp on is just that – rhetoric. 

After four years of Democratic Party control of the Congress, and nearly two years into Obama’s Presidency, the Democrats are beginning to lose their base’s support.Deputy National Director of Organizing for America, Obama’s re-mobolized campaign organization, Jeremy Bird, remains hopeful, however: 

“The past week alone has shown clear signs the enthusiasm-gap theory made popular by the chattering class is overblown. On Tuesday, President Obama kicked off the first of five “Moving America Forward” events with a rally at the University of Wisconsin in Madison ”Dwarfing a February 2008 rally on the same campus that drew a crowd of 17,000, last week’s Madison rally brought together 26,500 people…”   

He went on, 

“[The crowd] cheered as the president ticked off the progress made on behalf of young voters in the past two years… And they cheered wildly as the president asked them to canvass, to phone bank, and most importantly, to vote on Nov. 2.”Geared toward young voters, the president’s speech was part of a larger organizing effort across the country, with students at more than 200 colleges hosting “watch parties” to see a live webcast of the Madison event… [college activists also] committed to vote and planned campus organizing drives for the last few days of voter registration.”  

Despite this last-minute surge in support by university students, however, (and Obama’s repeated embarrassing reminders to the young crowd of just what elected officials were “in the house”), the polls are fairly clear: Democrats are not likely to convince enough of their base that this next round of voting will usher in anything better than the past four years. A recent GALLUP Poll confirms, where 47 percent of Republicans say they were very enthusiastic about voting, only 28 percent of Democrats said the same. Indeed, of the Democrats who are expected to turn out to vote, the prime motivation was simply out of “party loyalty,” according to GALLUP, and not to any particularly strong faith in candidates. 

It only makes sense. The Democrats have failed time and time again to put through needed reforms for American workers. 

The Dem’s have had an incredible amount of power over the past four years – a supermajority in Congress, an extremely enthusiastic base, as well as one of the most liberal Democratic presidents in memory. But for all of those electoral victories – and voters are noticing – there has been little substantial change in the quality of life for American’s; the recession just keeps rolling on. 

Regardless of whether or not it was Bush’s fault to begin with, people are looking for hope. 

Nearly 19% of American workers are underemployed this month, meaning they only work part-time but want to work full-time or are simply unemployed, according to the most recent study done by GALLUP. Meanwhile, consumer spending remains the lowest its been since the beginning of the economic meltdown, 30 million people remain uninsured and incapable of receiving quality healthcare, and nearly 43% of American workers complain that they are underpaid for what little work they can find.